Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4) (3 page)

“S
houldn’t we at least try to help them?”

Taeral and I were sitting at a table in the parlor—the entertainment center and unofficial meeting room at the Castle, off the back of the lobby. Sadie had heard the commotion and joined us. I’d told her what happened as best I could, considering I had no goddamned clue what happened other than Zoba had tried to cut an oversized bug out of his back. And Denei apparently thought he should leave it there.

Now Taeral was saying we should just forget about the whole thing.

“The one the Duchenes serve is ancient and powerful,” he said. “He is a vengeful god, a wicked trickster, and he is without remorse. Help them cross him, and he’ll strike you down just as swiftly.”

“Come on. A god?” I frowned at him. “Look, if this guy is so evil, they probably need help. Even if Denei says they don’t.”

Taeral shook his head. “Gideon, they choose to serve him,” he said. “You must understand that, and you must not interfere. He will destroy you.”

“Who is this guy, anyway?”

“I’ll not speak his name.” He looked hard at me. “And if you value your life, brother, you’ll leave this alone. They take care of their own.”

I sighed and sat back in the chair. “All right, man. I’ll try.”

“You’d best do more than try.”

“He’s right, Gideon,” Sadie said. “The Duchenes are dangerous. Even I’ve heard the rumors about their master, whatever he is. And some of the things they did back in the Hive…” She shivered slightly. “This whole thing is bad news.”

I couldn’t argue with that. There was no scenario that made centipedes burrowed under your skin good news. Taeral and Sadie knew a lot more about Others in general than I did, and they’d been around the Duchenes a lot longer. I should probably listen to them.

Still, the look in Zoba’s eyes—that was desperation to escape. Something I was intimately familiar with. I knew what it was like to be willing to do anything, including self-mutilation, to get away from someone.

And I wasn’t sure I could ignore that.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go.” Sadie flashed a disappointed look at Taeral, and then stared at her lap. “I mean, if there’s going to be trouble here…”

Taeral reached over and took her hand. “Perhaps you are right,
a’ghreal
. We can—”

“No, you guys should go,” I said. They’d planned to spend a few days out in the Pennsylvania mountains with Sadie’s pack, so she could formally introduce Taeral to her father and hope he didn’t try to kill him. Their sort of secret, on-off relationship hadn’t been easy, especially since weres and the Fae didn’t mix. The inter-species feud had been going on for centuries. “You wanted to be back before the holidays, right? It’s like three weeks to Christmas. If you don’t do it now, you might not get another chance for a while.”

Considering we were gearing up to take on Milus Dei soon,
a while
might be
never.
But I wasn’t going to say that out loud.

“Yes, I suppose,” Taeral said uneasily. “If you promise to contact me, should anything go wrong. Or should our father return.”

“You know I will.” It’d been almost two weeks since we got back from Arcadia, and Daoin had decided to stay in the Fae realm, where the stronger magic would help him heal from losing all of his memories. He’d promised to come back. He hadn’t exactly given us a schedule, but time moved slower in Arcadia—so he’d been there for about a month now. He could return any time.

Sadie gave me a tentative smile. “You sure you’ll be okay without us?” she said. “You know, you could come too. Elara would love to see you again.”

“No, I’m good. This should be just the two of you.” I grinned and added, “Besides, there’s certain things I really don’t want to know about. Including what you do in your private time.”

“And I appreciate your not knowing,” Taeral said, with just a hint of aggression. “Very well, then. If you’re certain.”

I nodded. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen around here.”

Even as I said it, I decided to ignore the feeling that it sounded like famous last words.

C
HAPTER 4

T
here was a whole lot of information in the files I had on Milus Dei. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of it made sense.

I’d dropped Taeral and Sadie off at Penn Station to catch a late train to Scranton, Pennsylvania—the closest station to the small town where Sadie’s pack lived in the mountains. That was where I’d gotten all this stuff I was looking at now. Chester Rigby, the town’s resident conspiracy nut, had been inadvertently tracking the cult for years because he thought Milus Dei was orchestrating an alien invasion. He’d made me copies of everything he had.

His documents and notes pretty much reflected his mindset in terms of order. I should’ve had Taeral drop by to visit Chester while they were out there, and ask if he’d forgotten to give me the secret decoder ring that went with the files.

I was in my room at the Castle, with folders and loose paper spread out all over the bed. At the moment I was just trying to group everything into general categories. So far those categories included locations, individual cult members, operations, history, and Crap That Had Nothing To Do With Milus Dei, which was the biggest pile I had. Everything from random photos of the Vatican, to post-death Elvis and Kurt Cobain sightings, to badly produced brochures advertising trips to the moon in a ‘reengineered flying saucer’.

This was going to take a really long time.

I’d just started reading a file on a ‘mobile unit’ in the Midwest, where Chester had scribbled not-so-helpful, completely unrelated things like
gene splicing
and
freelancers
and
check the caves
, when someone knocked at my door. I frowned and maneuvered off the cluttered bed, hoping there hadn’t been any problems at the train station. I couldn’t imagine what anyone else would want me for right now.

It was Denei.

“Hey, handsome.” She looked exhausted—eyes bloodshot, hair loose and damp with sweat. “Wondered if you had a minute. I wanted to apologize for…earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Is Zoba okay?”

“For now.” Her lips thinned to a firm slash, and she stared at the floor for a minute. “Listen, would you come down to the parlor, maybe have a drink with me? I think I owe you an explanation. And damn, do I need a drink,” she said on a shaky laugh.

“You don’t have to explain.” I knew all about family secrets. Christ, I had plenty of my own that’d never see the light of day, if I could help it. “Really, it’s all right.”

She put a trembling hand on my arm. “I want to,” she said. “Please.”

Damn. And I thought nothing scared Denei. “Yeah, okay,” I said. “I wasn’t getting very far with this, anyway.”

“Thanks, handsome.”

I followed her down the stairs, thinking about Taeral’s warning. As a matter of fact, I did value my life—and just hearing her out was probably getting myself involved in a way I shouldn’t, if the guy they worked for was really as powerful as he’d said.

But I couldn’t stop seeing that desperate look in Zoba’s eyes.

Reun was waiting for us in the parlor. I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering how close he and Denei had gotten, but I’d barely seen him since we’d brought him back from Arcadia. The Seelie noble had gone through an ordeal I couldn’t even imagine while he was a prisoner of the Unseelie Queen. I didn’t blame him for withdrawing from everything.

Right now, he looked as wiped out and on edge as Denei. I had to wonder how much he knew about what was going on.

I’d guess probably more than me.

“Gideon.” Reun nodded a greeting and headed for the closest table, where there was an unlabeled bottle of something red next to a small stack of plastic cups. “I do hope you’ll drink with us,” he said. “I’d been saving this for…a better occasion, but this seems to call for something more than that dreadful swill your brother keeps around.”

“I guess.” Taeral had a strange way of dealing with his drinking problem. He’d pick up bottles of the cheapest rotgut whiskey he could find, and then see how long he could go without drinking them. Usually, someone else did him the favor of emptying the bottles before he could give in to temptation. But sometimes he still got there first. “So what is it?”

Reun gave a faint smile. “Elderberry wine.”

“Okay. You twisted my arm.” I had to admit, that was the good stuff. It was a popular drink for the Fae, and not just because it tasted a hundred times better than anything humans had ever come up with. It also happened to neutralize poisons like cold iron and mandrake.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to be poisoned to appreciate the stuff.

Denei set the cups out and poured three of them about half-full, with the speed of a Manhattan bartender during happy hour. “We fresh out of fancy glassware,” she said, smirking as she pushed one of them toward me. “Hope you don’t mind slumming it.”

“Works for me.” I sat down at the table, and Denei took the chair across from me while Reun settled between us. “So, you had something you wanted to tell me,” I said. “If you’re sure, go for it.”

A brief look passed between the two of them, and Denei raised her cup. Her other hand rested on the table, clenched in a tight fist. “Let’s drink first,” she said. “I’m gonna need a shot of liquid courage, know what I mean?”

I shrugged. “Hell, maybe I do, too. You’re kind of scaring me.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re still shaking.” I nodded at her clenched hand. “Never seen anything upset you this much. Except maybe Reun.”

“Yeah, well…” She closed her eyes briefly. “This ain’t gonna be easy.”

“Believe it or not, I understand.” I gestured with my cup, and drank.

The wine was just as sweet, just as incredibly satisfying as I remembered. But there was something different—a bitter, almost metallic note that coated my tongue and caught in my throat. It was like swallowing blood.

I suddenly realized neither of them had actually taken a drink.

And then my head started to swim.

“What the hell?” Despite feeling like I was on the verge of drowning, my voice came out normal and calm. But I was still nose-diving straight for unconsciousness. “Did you…Jesus Christ, what’s in this?
Diúsaegh.
”

The spell should’ve woke me up, shaken off whatever this was. But nothing happened.

Denei looked downright miserable, though her regret wasn’t scoring any points with me. “Sorry, handsome,” she said. “Your magic ain’t the same as mine.”

Why
?

I wanted to scream it. But my last thought stayed in my mouth as the world faded around me.

C
HAPTER 5

A
long, low whistle sounded somewhere in the fog, like a warning from another world.

For a minute all I knew was that something had gone very wrong—was still going wrong, out there beyond my closed eyes. And it had something to do with Zoba and the horrific thing embedded along his spine.