The Devil You Know (27 page)

“You volunteered us to guard the demons?” Jacq’s husky voice was soft, her face carefully calm, but there was a tenseness in her tone that said she was upset.

“No, I don’t have that right.” I ran my hand down her arm. “And even if I did, I would ask before obligating you to someone’s service.” In fact, I didn’t even know the plan, only that Jacq and Fera were part of it.

“Mynx?” Puzzled, Fera looked up from where she had been grinding the spell’s last ingredient: deadly nightshade.

I shook my head, lacing my fingers with Jacq’s. “No, it’s her plan. But Nana made the request that you two help Mynx and that you stay here during my run so the house will be protected. I simply didn’t try to persuade Nana from the idea, not that I could.” I laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Gwendolyn Delacy might not consider it unmannerly to offer someone else’s assistance to demons. But you can bet she’d consider it rude to take the offer back. I would have a hell of a fight on my hands for even suggesting it. And you know my grandmother…With her, it’s best to pick your battles.”

“Damn straight,” Fera muttered, turning back to her spell. Brit laughed under her breath. And Jacq nodded, giving me a worried look before again explaining the spell to our new guardian. No surprise, Fera and Jacq didn’t say another word. They hadn’t lived this long by being stupid.

Neither had Mynx. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what she had planned. If a small squadron of heavily armed vampires couldn’t keep Kathryn and Van safe, how would Mynx do it by herself? And she would definitely be by herself. According to Mynx, her entire plan hinged on that one fact.

The day passed quickly with everyone running about attending to different tasks. After a quick lunch, I loaded Gem, JJ, Brit, and myself into my rebuilt yellow Jeep and headed to The Burg to pick up a few supplies and go over the routes everyone would follow the next night. Mynx stayed home to act as guard. When we returned in the late afternoon, she left in her SUV to go over the route and attend to her own errands. Brit looked as tense as I felt, so I took the young blond into the back garden and we sparred with practice swords on the black and gray stone practice pad.

It was dusk. Brit and I had finished sparring and were on our way back to the house to clean up for dinner when the wards behind the garden rang, alerting us that someone was requesting entrance.

“Go on.” I shooed Brittan toward the house. “I’ll get it.” In that direction lay the path through the woods to the Wellsy homestead, so the visitor had to be Cassie or Gem.

Or so I thought.

I got to the swirling blue and green door only to find a slicked-down, dressed up vampire waiting. Marco wore a nice dark gray suit with a coral tie, a flower in his buttonhole, spit-shined wingtips, and his hair greased down. The only thing missing was the Tommy gun. Hands in his pockets, he bounced around on his toes. Gazing off into the woods, he didn’t immediately notice me, which was odd. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the pointy-toothed man was nervous.

I stood by the door and waited. After a moment, Marco turned, giving me an expectant look which turned to confusion when I made no move to open the door.

“My, my,” I said, “don’t you look spiffy. Didn’t have to dress up on my account though, Marco. You miss the message?” I asked, knowing damn well he hadn’t. I cocked my head and smiled sweetly. “The Kin are free of demon-sitting duty. You
can
go home.” I gave a small five-fingered wave.

Marco pulled his hands from his pockets, straightened his suit, and adjusted his tie. Through the magical barrier, black eyes met mine. I could almost see his cocky mask fall back into place. “I’m not here for the demons.” He held his hands together behind his back. “I have a date with Helena.” The words were slightly muffled by the wards, but my ears heard them loud and clear.

My brain however did not compute.

“You have a what? With who?” I crossed my arms. “Since when?” I had the nearly overwhelming urge to open the ward door just so I could close it in his smug face.

“A date. Your aunt. Since this morn. I was,” he smiled, “invited to
dinner
.” His smile widened, showing very large, very sharp fangs.

I gulped. Nana had said we were having fish tonight, but who knew what the vampire planned to eat? I simply hoped it wasn’t Aunt Helena. There was only so much mental scarring a girl could take. Having to watch this smarmy Italian blood drinker simpering…or worse, sipping…at my aunt’s boudoir might just put me over the limit.

* * *

March 15
^th
, 1727

Spurred on by the steady
drip
,
drip
of melting snow, the boy chiseled at the stone wall, uncaring of the sweat that burned his eyes or the blisters that burst on his aching hands. Deep within the cellar of the stockade, he should not have heard the water falling above, but the sound, along with the mason’s guiding voice, was loud in his ears.

It had been exactly one week since the boy had met the stone layer. He’d spent those seven days locating the tools he would need and pacing each wall, verifying for himself that the mason’s estimates were correct. Each day he made an attempt to breach the door, not wanting his Master to know the game had changed. Then he hunted, trying to feed the hunger that always gnawed at his belly. His growing desire for blood would have concerned him had he not had other, more pressing worries. Worries that were, even now, filling the cellar with their excited comments.

Yesterday, while marking his stones, he’d heard the icicles hanging from the mountain’s great pines breaking. Over and over, the
booming
cracks, like the first round of cannon fire from an invading army, had echoed across the valley. Two days before, they’d been in the midst of a blizzard. Today they were at the front of a spring thaw. With no warning and mere hours to nightfall, there had been no time to implement his plan.

At dusk, the boy had returned to his Master’s room expecting to again be chained. When the Master had merely drank from him then ignored him in favor of calling a treat forth from the gate, the boy knew he could not risk another night. The alchemist had begun to have trouble opening his stone portal. Every night, he spent longer, forcing more blood and more magic upon the black stone, and every night his rage upon the demonic beasts that finally stepped forth grew. Like the boy’s need of the rabbits, the alchemist’s need to feed on these creatures increased. And like the boy’s prey that had become sparser and sparser, fewer beasts came at his Master’s call. Chained or no, the first night the black stone did not open at the alchemist’s bidding would be the boy’s last. And that night was imminent.

So that day the boy had begun an hour after dawn when the alchemist could not be awakened. He was small and the stones were large. The mason said two at the most must be removed. He had not stopped the day before or this day to hunt, and there was nothing left in the stockade worth eating—nothing that hadn’t once been human. And though always starving, the boy was not that desperate, not yet. But with his body weak from hunger and persistent blood loss, his blows didn’t carry the force they would have only days before.

The first heavy block was the hardest. But he was determined. Two hours after midday, he pushed until the stone fell to the ground far below. Two hours more and the second stone joined it. This time he heard the tinkling of breaking glass as the stone crashed into something in the Master’s chambers. With rope the sleeping stable master had loaned him, the boy lowered himself, moved quickly between overladen tables, and into the small alcove where his Master slept. Within seconds, he stood over the alchemist, LaFortuna, knife drawn. He briefly considered allowing the man to awake, to see his death coming. The boy wanted LaFortuna to know the boy had won their game. That brief glimpse of fear and pain in the man’s black eyes would be a small but satisfying justice for all the suffering he had caused.

But the voices were now all there with him, arguing. The sleeping villagers—the mothers with their crying babies, the huntsmen and bakers, the candle-makers, the herbalists, the milkmaids and cooks, the scullery maids and stable lads, the midwives and holy men, the simpering pages and shy adolescents, the crones and wizened old men, the chubby toddlers clinging to their fathers’ legs and the scruffy youths peering into each colorful bubbling vat of mystery brew—they all had something to say. They all wanted revenge and their freedom. Like himself, they all wanted the alchemist dead. And more than a few had descriptive advice as to what he should cut off first.

But it was his mother, quiet and calm amid the din, he heard and listened to. It was her wisdom he obeyed. To wait was to risk his life and their eternity. She cared little for eternity. He cared little for his life. But for each other they cared greatly.

So with hours left until dark, he plunged the dagger into the alchemist’s heart. Repeatedly.

Leaving the dagger in place, the boy used the last of his strength to drag the man from the alcove, across the room, and onto the bare area in front of the gate. Kneeling beside the body, he pulled the knife free with a loud sucking sound and held it high above his head with both hands, considering. Then as he had seen his Master do to the creatures he consumed, the boy plunged the knife deep, sawing, ripping open the pale chest. Some of the villagers murmured in shock but the oldest encouraged him. No longer enspelled, they remembered what their wisest had taught them of the ancient ways. With bloody fingers, the boy reached in and removed the alchemist’s black, rotting heart. The oldest among them said he must hold the organ to ensure it did not return to its owner. The boy simply nodded. Whatever it took, this monster must never return to life.

Heart in hand and bloody knife again at his hip, the boy tiredly moved to gather the fuel his Master used to brew his potions.

Burn him! Burn him! Or risk he rise again.
The older voices began the chant and the younger soon chimed in. But when the boy came to the cabinet where the supplies were kept, he found it on its side. One of the heavy stones he had pushed through the wall lay half atop it. The cabinet’s doors had sprung open, tumbling its glass containers onto the floor. The lamp oil and other burnable compounds mingled with potion ingredients as they flowed like multicolored rivers through the floor’s cracks.

Time was running short. The boy could feel the sun sinking lower and lower. Concerned, the sleeping villagers ran through the room, shouting to each other, only to find what he already knew: It contained nothing else capable of burning a grown man to ash. The boy returned to stand over his Master and looked at the shining black portal, seeing only the bloody remains at his feet reflected therein, not noticing his own pitiful bedraggled reflection.

He would give the alchemist to the stone…assuming he could make it do as he bid. Surely wherever it was that LaFortuna sent his victims’ bones would be a sufficient burial for one such as this. As he had seen his Master do, the boy took the knife, slit his palm, and smeared his blood across the blackness, not feeling the cut’s sting. But nothing happened. Again and again, he tried, muttering every sinister snatch and sliver of spell he had ever overheard. Nothing.

Eyes brimming with tears, the boy, heart in one hand and knife in the other, leaned against the stone, resting his brow against it. As the dead heart touched the stone, it pulsed in his hand, beating out a long-forgotten dirge. At the heart-blood’s call, the black stone rippled against the boy’s skin.

A voice came out of the darkness. As soft and strong as his mother’s, the woman’s voice comforted him, even as her words broke what little spirit he had left. He was not hers, never would be. Still, she would give him one moment to serve her, though it would be his choice to do as she asked. He nodded against the stone, knowing what her request would cost. When he pulled the heart back, the stone solidified, the voice lost to him forever.

The boy turned to his former Master and loosed fully for the first time the dark hunger he had held at bay for months. He could smell blood. Blood everywhere. He saw the black-red smears of it on his Master’s white shirt and the small trail of it that led across the cold stone floor back to the alcove. And underneath that scent of blood was the smell of meat…ancient, richly ripe meat. The boy inhaled, taking the scents in, savoring them in a way he would not have weeks before.

Seeing what he planned, his mother spoke urgently, begging,
Not this! Go not down this dark path my son. We will find another way.

Alas, there was no other path for him. He had two tasks. With the alchemist’s death, one was done. And the voice in the stone had been certain.

There was only one way to fulfill the second.

As he had been bidden, he brought the alchemist’s heart to his mouth and began to eat. Even as his hunger and madness grew, his mother’s voice slipped away, fading from his mind. When he picked up the dagger and carved his Master up in earnest, his mother was nowhere to be found. In fact, all of the voices were gone. For the first time in many weeks, the boy was treated to a blessed silence. Like the pieces of demon-tainted, vampire flesh he consumed, the sudden lack of sound left him empty inside.

Chapter Sixteen

“Oh, what a wicked web we weave when at first we practice to conceive.”

—Old Demon Proverb

Night Twelve

It was tight but we managed to fit everyone at the dining table at the same time. Unaware that Kathryn, Van, Marco and Betz would be staying, Nana had invited Cassie and the children back for dinner. Likewise, Mynx had invited Fera, and I had invited JJ. Jacq was a given. (If I had to suffer this, so did she.) Nana wouldn’t hear of anyone eating in the kitchen, so we’d added every leaf possible to the old table, dragged in extra chairs. The children had gladly climbed each into an adult’s lap, and we’d all squeezed close together.