Fire Kin (22 page)

From across the room, a figure straightened beside one of the beds. “Not yet,” he said in a low voice. “But we're getting closer.”

His voice was polite, but as he straightened, I saw the white hair caught back in a tail behind his head.

“He's Blood,” I blurted, then felt somewhat foolish. Obviously this was not news to Guy or Bryony.

“Yes,” Bryony agreed with a hint of amusement in her eyes. “But he's not going to bite you. Atherton, would you come over here please and say hello to Captain Pellar?”

The vampire nodded, then flowed across the room, moving too quickly. The sight didn't ease my nerves. Only when he stopped beside Bryony did I get a good look at his face—or what was left of it. Scar tissue twisted and formed red whorls where his eyes should have been and marred half of the length of his face as well.

“Shal e'tan mei,”
I swore again, though I kept the words under my breath. Or I thought I did.

The vampire's mouth twisted wryly. “I agree,” he said. “The Blood Court's handiwork has a way of taking you that way.”

Bryony touched his arm. “Atherton, this is Asharic sa'Uriel'pellar. Captain of the mercenaries working for the Templars. Asharic, this is Atherton Carstairs. He works with Simon.”

And how in all the possible hells had that little alliance come about? I fought for some semblance of manners. “Hello,” I said, and started to bow but then stopped myself when I realized that the gesture was fairly futile. Atherton wouldn't be able to see it after all.

“Captain Pellar,” he returned affably. “Bryony has told me so little about you.” There was a hint of reproach mingled with curiosity in his voice.

“There's not much to tell,” I said. “Sword for hire.”

His head tilted. “That seems like an oversimplification. For one so . . .” He trailed off and I stared at him. Could he sense Fae powers?

The Blood had their own strange magic—not the least of which was how they transformed humans into their own kind—but it was nothing akin to the magic we used.

“And what exactly is that you and Simon are doing down here?” I asked Atherton, determined to change the subject away from me. I was fairly sure I knew the answer to that one. There was only one likely answer as to what a vampire and a healer might be doing in such a secret location with a roomful of blood-locked humans.

“We're working on a cure,” Simon's voice said from behind me.

I started. Damned iron. Normally I would've been able to sense a sunmage moving behind me as easily as breathing. But the iron made me feel half-blind and dumb. Which made my hands itch for the pistol at my hip as my instincts blared false alarms of imminent danger.

Unless Bryony and the DuCaines were the ones who'd tried to kill me earlier—and I'd bet my entire fortune and that of my Family against that, no matter how annoyed Bryony currently was with me—it seemed unlikely that they'd brought me down here to reveal their biggest secret and then kill me. Though I had little illusion about what might happen to me if I turned around and shared this particular secret with anybody else without their approval.

“Working on?” I looked at some of the patients . . . the mobile ones. The only blood-locked humans I'd ever seen didn't move unless instructed. And the worst of them didn't even do that. They just lay where they were until they died.

“We've had a little success.”

“How?”

“Firstly something we stumbled upon,” Simon said, and his tone suggested that I shouldn't ask too many questions about what that might be just yet. “And then with some assistance from my sister and Lady Adeline.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Lady Adeline and her friends know about this?”

“Yes. They're assisting us.”

“And how long will that last?”

“Well, it's not like they can take what they've shared back,” Simon said. “Even if things do go wrong.”

“They could kill all of you.”

“Unlikely,” Simon said.

“Extremely,” Lily agreed, coalescing out of the air beside him. “They might get one of us, but it's difficult to pin all of us down.”

I looked at the four of them. Bryony, who was from the highest of Fae Families, Simon, the strongest sunmage in the City, from what I'd been told, a wraith, and a Templar who was legendary several realms away. I had to agree with Lily. Short of blowing up the entire hospital at a time when all four of them were in it, I wouldn't want to try to take them out.

I frowned while I considered the implications of Simon's matter-of-fact statement. If the humans had a cure for blood-locking, then it changed the balance of power between the races considerably. The humans had conceded that the Blood had the right to any blood-locked humans and agreed that those who chose to go to the Night World and drink what was on offer ceded their rights to protection as part of the original treaty.

At the time, they'd probably never imagined that quite so many people would continue to willingly—or stupidly—give themselves into the Blood's power. But they had. There were always those curious or reckless or idiotic enough to think that they would be the exception. That they could drink just once and not be ensnared.

True, there were some humans who managed to stay on the fringes of the Night World and never actually taste vampire blood, but there were far more who fell. And died.

The Blood also fed from their Trusted, of course. Their human servants traded service for the chance of one day being turned and becoming near immortal. The Trusted too ceded their rights, but the Blood didn't lock them. The vampires needed them functioning until—if they did—they earned that final reward. But the Trusted were few in number and of course, for every one of them who turned, there was another Blood to be fed.

The Blood needed the humans. They could drink Fae or Beast blood, but neither of those races was easy prey when unwilling and not many were willing.

No, most of their food came from the humans and most of that from the blood-locked.

If the humans could cure the blood-locked, then they would not be so willing to declare them lost.

And then what would the Blood do?

“So,” I said to Simon, casually, “anyone tried to kill you lately?”

He shrugged. And then, oddly, grinned at Lily. “A time or two. No one's managed it yet, though.”

“So someone in the Blood knows what you're doing?”

“We think that Lord Lucius suspected,” Lily said. “I don't know for sure. Nor do I know what Ignatius or any other Blood lord may know or might have known. Lucius wasn't one for sharing secrets very often, but he may have told somebody.”

“If Ignatius knew, why didn't he use this to break the treaty?”

“For the answer to that, you'd have to ask him,” Guy said.

Simon sent him a look I couldn't decipher. Guy's grim mood didn't seem to have improved now that the secret was revealed and he'd done his duty in bringing me here. I wondered if he was not as happy with Simon's work as the others were.

“For Ignatius to do that, he would have needed proof. He didn't have proof,” Simon said.

“He could have broached the issue,” I said. “Forced the queen to deal with it.”

“Apparently he thought other methods would be more effective,” Simon said. “Perhaps he feared the queen would be sympathetic to our cause.”

“And was she?”

“I don't know. I never spoke to her,” Simon replied with a shrug. That was evasion. I was good at spotting evasion. I sent a questioning glance at Bryony.

“I don't know either,” she said. “She never asked me about it if she did.”

“Hmmm.” That lack of explanation was apparently as good as I was going to get. “So Ignatius may be trying to kill you or find out what's down here?” That explained the exercise the other night, at least. Testing the defenses.

Which was a concern. What did Ignatius have up his sleeve that he felt confident to try to launch an attack on one of the human strongholds? It was one thing to send a few Beasts—fast moving and excellent night fighters—to pull off a raid, but it was another thing entirely to try something on the scale that would be required to win their way through the hospital's defenses and down here to the tunnels.

Not to mention that they then had to get through the wards. Which would require Fae help, I thought. The wards obviously couldn't be broken with iron. They'd need to be undone magically. And vampire magic wasn't the same as Fae.

“Exactly how many people know about this place?” I asked.

“Everyone in this room,” Simon said. “Plus, Holly, Fen, and Saskia. Father Cho. And Lady Adeline and a few of the Blood who came with her.”

“No spies, if that's what you're thinking,” Guy said firmly. “Especially not now with the border so closely watched.”

“There are ways around any perimeter guard.” I could think of several forms of communication—magically aided—that could be used for a start. And that was before you got to simple codes. “It's naive to think that there are no sympathizers on this side of the border.”

“That's why the wards have all been increased. Here and for the rest of the hospital and the grounds,” Bryony said.

“We need earlier warning than that,” I said. “Wards closer to the border . . . you have those. We need to sensitize them.” I frowned, thinking. Charles would be the best person to use. He had a devious mind and had come up with traps and defenses that had saved our necks from sticky situations more times than I could count. Then the Fae—whether from my men or Bryony's healers—could execute whatever ideas he came up with.

“We can do that,” Guy said. “Anything else?”

I shrugged. “I'd suggest you work on nailing down your cure.”

“Brilliant,” Simon said, deadpan. “Why hadn't we thought of that?”

“What's the sticking point?” I asked.

“Do you know much about healing?” Simon asked.

“A little,” I said. “I'm not trained like Bryony, but I was taught the basics and I've picked up a thing or two along the way.”

“He healed Bryony's arm in Summerdale,” Guy offered.

“Not exactly the most subtle of achievements,” Bryony murmured.

“That doesn't mean I didn't understand the theory,” I protested. “I just need more practice.”

“Let us hope that it doesn't get to that point,” Bryony replied, flexing her hand. “Because if we get so low on healers that we need your help, then we're all in trouble.” But she smiled as she said it and I risked an answering grin.

“I believe Captain Pellar was asking Simon to explain his theories,” Lily said, steering us back from the conversational byway we had strayed down.

Simon touched her hand and then nodded at me. “All right,” he said. “It goes something like this. When a human drinks vampire blood, his blood changes.”

“Changes how?”

“That's the part that's hard to explain without healing abilities. You understand how we see when we use our power?”

I nodded. Yes. I didn't have the fine control that a healer had, but I knew what it was to sense what was going on inside a body and see the structures in my mind and how they were damaged.

Simon looked relieved. “Good. Then you know that it's something that's sensed more than felt. Anyway, the more vampire blood a human drinks, the more their blood changes. We can sense a difference in the blood between a normal human and one who's blood-locked. We think the changes mean that it doesn't do all the things that blood is supposed to do anymore.”

“So you need a way to change the blood back to how it was?”

Simon nodded. “Yes. But it's not that easy. There's also magic involved. The blood-locked are tied somehow to the vampire's bloodline.”

“I don't understand.”

“If I was blood-locked,” Guy said, “and you killed the vampire who locked me, it wouldn't be enough to free me.”

“It never has been, has it?” I asked.

“It's not been tried very often,” Lily said. “But as Guy was saying, it's not enough to kill the vampire who addicted the person. But if you kill the eldest vampire in that bloodline, then it has an effect. We found out by accident when Lord Lucius died. Some of the blood-locked Simon was treating, they woke up a little when that happened.”

Woke up? I looked at Guy for confirmation. He nodded. But he still looked grim. Which was surprising. I would have thought a Templar would be in favor of anything that might save humans from the Blood. “All right. So killing Lucius roused some of the blood-locked. Why?” It seemed the obvious question.

“We assumed that it must have been either because Lord Lucius was the one who locked them or because he was the oldest vampire in the City. More likely the latter. Lucius rarely left anyone he locked alive. But he was definitely the oldest vampire in the City, and for many of the court, he was the oldest of their bloodline,” Lily said.

“Not an easy hypothesis to test.”

“No,” Simon agreed. “So we've been looking for other ways. We'd already been using Atherton's blood to keep the patients we had here alive. His blood kept the patients from getting worse, but they didn't improve either. Then Saskia noticed the difference in their blood.”

“Saskia? Isn't she a metalmage?” Metalmages were not healers.

“Her affinity is for iron,” Bryony said. “In her case a very strong affinity. She can sense blood and she can tell the difference between the blood of someone who is locked and someone who is not.”

“Can you do that too?”

Bryony nodded. “I learned from Saskia.”

“You merged?” Merging was one way the Fae used to teach healing techniques. It meant piggybacking onto another's magic and senses so you could follow along whilst the other healed. I hadn't heard of a Fae merging with a human before, but then again, I didn't know much about how human healers were trained.