Fear the Darkness (Guardians of Eternity) (22 page)

But his fearsome appearance was ruined by his stunted size and the pair of delicate, gossamer wings that should have been on the back of a sprite. And worse, his magic was as unpredictable as the Midwest weather.

Who could blame the Gargoyle Guild for voting him out? He was a three-foot pain in the ass who’d latched onto Viper’s and Styx’s mates and refused to be dislodged.

“Levet,” he muttered.

Oblivious to the distinct lack of welcome, Levet blew them both kisses. “Ah,
mes amis
, have you missed me?”

Styx snorted. He’d missed the gargoyle like he missed a hot poker shoved in his eye. “What are you doing here?”

Levet’s delicate wings, shimmering in shades of crimson and blue and gold, fluttered in confusion. “Where else would I be?”

“I thought you were searching for Yannah?” he reminded the beast, referring to the peculiar demon who had a habit of appearing and disappearing without warning.

“Bah.” Levet rubbed his stunted horn. “She is making me nutmeg.”

“Nutmeg?”

“I think he means nutty,” Viper said dryly.

“She pops here. She pops there.” Levet waved his hands. “Pop, pop, pop, pop. How can I catch her if she will not stand still?”

Viper snorted. “Females rarely make the chase easy. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect they’re born to make men utterly and completely nutmeg.”

There was a brief silence as the three males nodded in rare agreement. Then, with a sharp shake of his head, Styx pointed toward the door. “Go keep Darcy and Shay company,” he commanded. “I have business to discuss with Viper.”

“As much as I prefer the company of your charming mates, I need to speak with you.”

“Later.”

“
Non
.” Levet stubbornly held his ground. “This is important.”

Styx clenched his hands. As much fun as it would be to mount the damned creature over the marble fireplace, he knew Darcy would never forgive him. Dammit.

“Fine.” His lips curled back to display his massive fangs. “Spit it out.”

The gargoyle’s tail twitched, but he wasn’t so stupid as to challenge Styx’s patience. Not tonight.

“You know that I keep in contact with Darcy and her sisters?”

“Yes, you use some sort of telepathy.”

“Not exactly telepathy. It’s more a portal that I form inside their mind. . . .”

“Do you have a point?” Styx interrupted, not giving a shit how the creature managed to speak mind to mind with his mate.

Levet sniffed. “Darcy asked me to try and contact Cassie using my powers.”

“Clever,” Styx murmured, his pride in his wife swelling through his heart.

“Clever, but, unfortunately, my efforts did nothing but give me the aching head,” Levet admitted.

“So you failed?”

“Not so much a failure as a . . . misfire.”

Levet wasn’t the only one with the aching head, Styx silently conceded. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I could not contact her, but she did manage to contact me.”

A sudden tension filled the air as both vampires stared at the tiny demon in astonishment.

“You spoke with her?” Styx bit out.

Levet gave a lift of one shoulder. “Only a brief moment.”

Viper stepped forward. “What did she say?”

“Nothing, but she sent this.”

Levet held out his hand to reveal a small piece of paper. Styx leaned forward, taking the paper and unfolding it to study the squiggle of odd lines.

“What is it?” Viper demanded.

“A prophecy.” Styx lifted his head to stab his friend with a worried frown. “Get Roke.”

Gaius’s lair in Louisiana

Gaius sat in a leather wing chair in his office, holding a history book that glorified his battles as a Roman general. He might not remember his human days, but he took pleasure in the knowledge he had been a brilliant commander feared by all. Usually, it was his favorite way to spend a quiet evening in his lair.

Tonight, however, he found no peace.

Not even several hours of rough sex followed by a deep feeding had eased the sense of foreboding that had haunted him for the past two weeks. Tossing aside the book, Gaius surged to his feet and paced toward the window, his brocade dressing gown brushing the floor.

He knew what was troubling him.

After following the Dark Lord’s commands to protect the wizard spirit, he’d then returned to the mists along with Dolf. He perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised to discover the master had been resurrected into the child. But he’d been frankly unnerved by the sight of the powerful deity in the body of a teenage girl.

Thankfully, he’d concealed his growing apprehension—unlike Dolf, who had managed to incur the anger of the Dark Lord—long enough to escape out of the mists.

There was no way he was going to hang around to bear the brunt of the Dark Lord’s frustration when he couldn’t use his new body to return to the world. Drained or not, she was still powerful enough to turn Gaius into a puddle of screaming pain.

Now he was left to stew in his own doubts, caught between the urgent need to hear from the Dark Lord so they could finish their deal and he could demand the return of his beloved mate, and a growing desire to be forgotten by the evil bastard. Or rather . . . the evil bitch.

Sensing the approach of a male cur, Gaius was careful to mask his emotions as he slowly turned to watch Dolf step into the room. In the candlelight the dog was looking distinctly worse for the wear.

In the past two weeks his hair had grown past the buzz cut and had acquired several streaks of gray. Worse, he’d dropped nearly fifty pounds, leaving his face gaunt and his stomach sunken.

Not at all the cocky mutt that Gaius had first met just a month ago. But then again, they’d all lost a bit of their cock.

“You disposed of the body?” he demanded.

Dolf nodded, his eyes glittering with a hectic light. The cur was hanging on to his sanity by a thread. A thin thread.

“It’s rotting deep in the swamp with all the others.” His lips curved in a gruesome imitation of a smile. “You have quite a collection out there. Thirteen, isn’t it?”

Gaius stiffened. He didn’t like being reminded of the whores that he’d killed over the past few nights. Not because of his conscience. That had died along with Dara. But it was a nasty reminder of his loss of control.

It was happening far too frequently.

“Don’t presume to judge me.” His words were coated in ice. “My hungers are instinct, not a perversion of nature like some I could name.”

Dolf snorted, indifferent to Gaius’s disdain. “Hell, I don’t care if you drain every whore from here to Timbuktu, but the locals are starting to get itchy about the girls who’ve gone missing. Unless you want an angry mob, complete with torches and pitchforks, on our doorstep, you might want to dial back on your feedings.” He paced to study the books that lined the shelves. “Or at least import your meals from farther away.”

Gaius narrowed his gaze. “Is there a reason you’ve intruded into my privacy?”

There was a long silence, as if Dolf was considering his words. Never a good thing. Then slowly he turned to meet Gaius’s rigid expression. “Do you think it’s odd we haven’t heard from the master?”

Gaius hissed. The question had, of course, been nagging at the edge of his mind. But he was smart enough to know it was too dangerous to speak aloud.

“She will contact us when she needs our services,” he said stiffly.

“Are you so certain?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Dolf ’s humorless laugh echoed through the silent house. “Our last mission was yet another epic failure.”

Gaius shrugged. “The wizard was to blame for bringing the Hunter and Sylvermyst into the master’s lair. It wasn’t our fault.”

Dolf shuddered, still obviously traumatized by their time spent in the master’s company. “Yeah, well, the wizard is dead and the Dark Lord is still trapped,” the cur unnecessarily pointed out. “She might have decided to spread the blame around.”

“We would know if she’d decided to punish us for the latest disaster,” Gaius said with a grimace. “She’s never subtle.”

Dolf nodded, but his brow remained furrowed. “If you say.”

Gaius rolled his eyes. He could send the cur away, but Dolf would only return until he’d said whatever was on his tiny mind. “Now what’s bothering you?”

The cur hunched his shoulders. “To be honest, I preferred the thought that we’re being punished.”

Gaius frowned. “As opposed to what?”

“Have you considered the possibility that the Dark Lord hasn’t contacted us because . . .”

His words trailed away and Gaius made a sound of impatience. “
Cristo
, just say it.”

“Because she can’t.”

Gaius cursed, instinctively glancing around the seemingly empty room. Even if the Dark Lord was trapped in another dimension, he—or rather she—had spies everywhere.

“You are a fool,” he hissed.

“Perhaps, but I would be even more of a fool to spend the next century waiting in this godforsaken swamp for a master who has already lost the war,” Dolf grimly pressed, too far gone in his growing madness to consider the danger.

“What do you suggest?” Gaius asked, the ice in his voice warning he wouldn’t be coaxed into an indiscretion. His growing doubts would go with him to the grave. “That we abandon the Dark Lord and pray she doesn’t manage to escape her prison?”

Without warning, the nearest bookshelf slid outward to reveal a hidden passageway.

Gaius tensed in shock, his fangs lengthening in preparation for an attack. Instead, Sally stepped into the room, her hair hanging around her face, which was amazingly devoid of her ridiculous black makeup, and her slender body covered by a flannel nightgown.

She looked like a child. As long as you didn’t look into the eyes, which were glowing with a crimson fire.

“Yes, Dolf, please enlighten me on how you intend to betray me?”

The cur fell to his knees, his head pressed to the floor at the sudden blast of power that had nothing to do with Sally and everything to do with the Dark Lord. “Mistress.”

Sally moved forward, her expression slack as she was piloted by the evil deity to stand directly next to the cringing cur. “I have made allowances for you because you are young and impetuous, but my patience has run its course.” The voice was female, but not Sally’s.

“No, please,” Dolf whined, the stench of his fear filling the air. “I swear I will never again question your powers.”

“No, you will not.”

Leaning down, Sally placed her hand on the back of Dolf ’s head, her touch almost gentle. But even as the cur’s violent shudders began to ease, a dark mist formed around his body.

At first nothing happened and Gaius wondered if it was simply a spell to keep him trapped on the floor. Then, instinctively, Gaius stepped back, watching in horror as the blackness began to boil and churn, consuming Dolf ’s body with a silent swiftness.

There was no other way to explain it. Wherever the mist touched Dolf, his body just . . . vanished. There was no sound, no scent, no sense of anything but death claiming its latest trophy.

A ball of dread lodged in the pit of his stomach.

What the hell?

Sally was only supposed to be a conduit for the Dark Lord, but it was obvious she was able to call on some hefty magic. The thought should have been reassuring. It surely meant that the Dark Lord still maintained a large portion of her powers and was capable of returning Dara from the grave.

Instead, Gaius could only watch Dolf being efficiently destroyed and wonder if the cur had been given the preferable fate.

It was the distant howls of Ingrid who had been driven to her wolf form as she sensed the loss of her brother that at last snapped Gaius out of his dangerous sense of unreality.

Lifting his head, he found Sally regarding him with those eyes that burned with crimson fire.

“A shame, but he had outlived his usefulness.” Stepping over Dolf ’s disintegrating body, Sally walked to stand directly in front of Gaius. “What of you?”

Gaius swiftly bowed. “I am yours to command.”

“So I have your loyalty?”

“Without question.”

“And what of your faith?”

Gaius warily straightened, praying the creature was incapable of reading his mind. “My faith?”

“It’s simple, vampire.” She reached to run a nail down his cheek. “Do you still believe we can achieve your glorious future together?”

Gaius suppressed his shudder, holding himself motionless beneath her light touch. No use provoking the crazy creature. “Of course.”

“Hmmm.” The nail dug deep enough to draw blood. “Not the ringing endorsement I might have hoped for from one of my most devoted disciples.”

Gaius desperately sought a distraction. “What would you have of me?”

The crimson eyes narrowed before she dropped her hand and stepped back. “I need you to travel to Chicago.”

“Again?” Caught off guard, Gaius spoke without thinking. “Did the prophet escape?”

The air hummed with a surge of power and Gaius silently cursed his stupid question. What the hell had happened to his frigid discipline?

“You agree with Dolf?” Sally asked in a lethally soft voice. “You suspect that I’m incompetent?”

“I . . . of course not.”

“But you suspect I’m incapable of holding on to my prisoners?”

“No.” Gaius sought to minimize the danger. “I was just curious why you would want me to return to Chicago.”

The punishing pressure eased, although the crimson gaze regarded him with an unwavering intensity that warned his brush with death was far from over.

“The child I need is being held there.”

Child? There was only one child that the Dark Lord could be interested in, and yet, Gaius paused, certain that he must have misunderstood.

“You mean the babe that’s being protected in the King of Vampire’s lair?”

Crimson eyes flared with hunger. “Yes.”

“That is . . .” This time Gaius managed to swallow his impulsive words.

“There’s something you want to share?” the Dark Lord mocked.

Hell yes, there was something he wanted to share. He wanted to share that it was sheer madness to try and battle his way into the most highly guarded lair in the entire world.