“Stop this instant!” Frobisher shouted, but no one on Le Renaud's crew heeded his order. He headed for the closest crew member yarding on the lines to the sails, grabbed her hard by the shoulder and swung her about, pulling back his fist, ready to strike her.
Winn barreled forward with a yell and butted the lieutenant aside with his shoulder, sending the man skittering backward on his backside. He glanced back at Alexa. She'd already disarmed both of Frobisher's men and held her cyanide gun on them. Four of Le Renaud's crew gathered around her to assist in holding the men at bay using their own Amanarath crossbows against them.
The lieutenant rose from the deck and in a slow, smooth move, removed his goggles.
Shock like an electric current rippled through Winn's body.
He'd thought things couldn't get any worse. He'd been dead wrong.
Frobisher's eyes changed from a pale, almost colorless blue to yellow with vertical slitsâa demon's eyes.
“Surprised?” Rathe said with undisguised satisfaction. In an instant Winn recognized the sound of the Darkin's voice echoing beneath Frobisher's as the ship lifted off the water and began to climb steadily into the blue sky and away from the English dirigible.
“Rathe.”
“Winchester Cyrus Jackson. How nice it is to see you again.”
The rope-like scar across Winn's left thigh throbbed, growing taut. There'd been only two times he'd gone up against a demon face-to-face, and both had been disastrous.
“You may now give the Book to me.”
“Never had any intention of giving it to the queen, did you?”
“Oh, Frobisher did. He's still in here, you know, screaming to get out now that he realizes his partnership with me isn't going exactly the way he'd planned. But I find I am enjoying this body very much, and I'm loathe to give it up. After all, so many people trust him so implicitly.”
“He gave himself over to you willingly?” Winn asked smoothly, playing for time. His mind spun. There were only so many options. He could grab Alexa and dive off the side of the ship. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the ocean falling farther and farther away as they rose higher into the sky. By now the drop was getting too dangerous. He could throw his pack to Alexa and she could dematerialize, but wherever she went, Rathe could easily follow, and then she'd have to fight him on her own without his help. As they entered the clouds, a ghostly fog swept over the ship, chilling Winn's heated skin with droplets of moisture and making it difficult to see the crew as they bound the lieutenant's men in chains.
“Since he wanted revenge on Sir Marley Turlock for the loss of his eyesight.” The yellow eyes sparkled with malevolent appreciation. “Of course, not every Hunter is satisfied with his lot in life. Many become Darkin once they tire of the fight.”
Rathe in his Frobisher bodysuit leaned forward, putting his booted foot up on the rail and resting his forearm atop his bent knee. “Are you growing tired, Winchester?”
Winn glanced at the crossbow Frobisher's man had left propped against the railing for an instant, then locked gazes back with the yellow-eyed demon. Winn shrugged. “Still got plenty of fight in me.”
Frobisher's sneer collapsed into a firm, angry line. “Give me the Book.”
“
No
.”
The dark vertical pupils widened from slits and took over the yellow of the demon's eyesâa predator ready to pounce. “Now!” he yelled.
All hell broke loose. With a snarl and a yell Frobisher's two men shifted into a large, black wolf and a tall, pointed-eared fae, lunging at Le Renaud's crew. To their credit the surprised women fought back.
The demon's hands moved so fast Winn couldn't follow their movement. He only knew that the instant he saw the Amanarath raised up in Alexa's direction was the same instant he heard the twang of multiple bolts being released. There was no time to think. Winn jumped and dove in front of her. Hot pain pierced his shoulder as the bolt tore through flesh and nicked bone. Alexa cried out and crouched down beside him, undoing the bindings at his wrists.
“Why did you do that?” she muttered, her voice shaking.
“Silver-tipped bolt would hurt me”âhe sucked in a harsh breathâ“kill you.”
Her eyes turned luminous, golden, like liquid sunlight as she cradled his cheek in her small palm. He glanced up to see both the werewolf and the fae bleeding out on the deck, each struck through the heart with bolts from their own crossbows, fired by the crew. They turned them now upon the archdemon. “Hold your fire!” Winn yelled. “The bolts won't kill him.”
Rathe let out a malicious, vile Frobisher laugh that wasn't wholly human, the echoing of his voice overlaid with Rathe's. “Foolish Hunter. Did you really think you could stop me from taking the Book from you once you retrieved it from holy ground?”
Winchester's heart stopped for a beat. Holy hell. Rathe was right. Without Winn's help in removing the Book from Haydn's sarcophagus, Rathe would have had to find another means to extract it from hallowed ground. But Winn, being the fool-headed, take-charge idiot he was, had just had to go and get it. Had to beat Frobisher to the punch. And Rathe had counted on it.
“So you see, now I have you,
and
I have the Book.”
“Like hell you do. You're going to have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.”
“Your offer is acceptable,” Rathe replied with sick delight. He advanced, but Winn was ready.
With practiced ease he flipped the rifle from his back one-handed, jerked it to cock it, and fired. Frobisher stumbled backward, his chest beginning to bleed, but then kept coming. Alexa jumped forward to attack him, her fangs bared and face warped into a mask of vampiric fury.
She swiped at Rathe's falsely human face, raking four deep gashes in his cheeks with her fingernails. He hit her hard with a fist to the side of the head, sending her down to the deck. Winn bent low and ran forward, knocking the demon up against the railing of the airship.
While Rathe's powers were limited by the shell he was in, Frobisher was a damn sight stronger than Winn had anticipated. Frobisher threw two quick punches to Winn's solar plexus, making him double over. But growing up on the frontier and dealing with drunken miners and roughshod gamblers meant he'd learned a fair bit about fighting, the dirtier the better.
Winn jerked his head up hard, coming up right beneath the lieutenant's jaw with the top of his skull, resulting in a satisfying crunch and groan. At the same time, he reached for the bowie in his boot. Winn spun out of range of Frobisher's fists and sliced at the man's belly, trying to gut him with his knife.
Frobisher dodged the blade but came close enough to Alexa to grab her by the hair on the back of her scalp, hauling her against him as a shield. The crew behind Winn gasped, their feet shuffling forward.
“Let her go. This is just you and me,” Winn growled.
Frobisher let out a maniacal laugh that made Winn's skin crawl and his wounded shoulder throb like hell. “She has every bit as much to do with this as you have.”
“Let her go, and I let you live.”
The yellow eyes of the demon flickered. “Frobisher's scared. Too bad I don't give a damn. Do your worst, little Slayer. Let's see what you can dish out before I kill you and pry the Book from your cold, dead hands. That was the bargain, wasn't it?”
Winn shifted, placing the balance of his weight on his left foot. He gauged the distance, then snapped up his leg and kicked out hard, the heel of his boot snapping Frobisher's head back with a crack.
Frobisher stumbled backward and hit the railing, but as he tumbled, one of his flailing hands grabbed hold of the back of Alexa's dress and dragged her with him over the edge into open air. Eyes wide with terror, she screamed.
“Alexa!”
Chapter 24
Winn sprinted forward, and his fingers touched Alexa's for a mere instant before she slipped beyond his grasp. His stomach dropped as she and Frobisher fell faster and faster.
A great dark cloud billowed out of Frobisher's open, screaming mouth as his frightened eyes turned from demon yellow back to ice blue when Rathe vacated his body. His limbs flailed, clutching nothing but air.
The dense black cloud surrounded Alexa, obscuring her as she and Frobisher fell into the nothingness below. Even after the swirling clouds swallowed them, Winn still heard their cries.
He slumped to the deck, every inch of him exhausted and throbbing with a potent mixture of disbelief, sorrow, and anger. He expected her to poof onto the deck of the ship. But she didn't. Each second slipped by, increasing the cold, numbing sensation that closed in around him, like the fog that surrounded the ship. She wasn't coming back because she couldn't. She was gone. And he'd let Rathe take her to her demise.
The crew were cautious in approaching him. They stood about in a semicircle with somber faces and idle hands. Le Renaud was the first to speak. She knelt beside him, her hair streaking darkly across the dried blood on her cheek. “You need to get that wound tended to.”
She squatted down beside him and began peeling back the bloodied part of his jacket and shirt. “Pierot, get me some water, salve, and bandages,” she ordered tersely.
“Aye, Captain!” A blond crew member went skittering below decks to fetch the supplies.
“I'm fine,” Winn grunted.
Le Renaud raised a dark brow, her dimple deepening as she flattened her lips into a firm line. “Aye. I can see that. Blood being on the outside's completely normal.”
Pierot came back with a bowl of water and a small wooden chest filled with the supplies the captain had ordered. She began to help peel away Winn's shirt. Le Renaud gave her a piercing look. “I can handle it from here.” Pierot cast her glance downward and gave a quick nod.
The captain began to wash away the blood that was beginning to crust on Winn's skin and took out a pot of salve and used the glistening ointment to pack the wound. “What can we do to help you?”
“Have you got any whiskey?” Winn said morosely, knowing the alcohol would only dull his pain, but never erase it.
She bandaged the wound with clean linens and pulled his shirt and jacket back into place. “Let me see what I can find.” She looked him in the eye and placed a hand on his good shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I'm sorry you lost her.”
Up until that moment he'd held back the pain. With her words it washed over him in a numbing tide. In one fell swoop he'd lost the chance to rid himself of the demon that had plagued him his entire life and save the woman he loved. But that didn't mean the battle was over. He had to get the Book back to Bodie and join his brothers in stopping Rathe from opening the Gates.
The captain got to her feet. When she moved, he spied Alexa's cyanide gun on the deck. It must have fallen from its hidden place in her skirts when she'd gone overboard. With a shaking hand he grabbed it and held it. The only thing he had left of his brave, inventive vampire. Duty alone dragged him to a standing position.
He eyed the captain. “How far can this thing fly in its current condition?”
“Turlock was able to get it running again, but we'll need more supplies to fix it properly for an Atlantic crossing.”
“Who?”
“Our engineer, Octavia Turlock.” Winn had thought the woman had more than just a passing resemblance to his friend. Her presence reminded him that he hadn't opened the missive from Marley for the queen, but perhaps he should.
Through the fog on the water, Winn could make out a rim of land, stark white against the edge of the water. “Where are we stopping to get supplies?”
“London. Those are the cliffs of Dover ahead of us. We should make English soil in an hour at most.”
Winn pulled at the edges of his mustache. His heart and soul were a gaping wound. And he'd get to themâas soon as the Book was united and the Gates closed. Until then he had to put Alexa and everything she was out of his mind.
He wanted to crawl into a dark hole and grieve. His chest felt restricted by a viselike band of pain.
Focus
. “Good,” he said grimly. “I've got a call to make.”
Â
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Alexa didn't know which end was up. One moment she'd been in free fall off the edge of the
Circe,
seeing Winn's agonized face, frantically trying to grab his hand only to feel the sliding, desperate touch of his fingers against hers. The next she'd been caught in a moving cloud of suffocating, oily darkness that threatened to crawl up her nose and down her throat. She could see and hear nothing, and her equilibrium was beyond hope. She tried to scream, but no sound emerged.
Don't worry, Alexandra Minunet Porter, I have plans for you.
The voice in her head made her flesh crawl with revulsion. A demon only used all of a person's name when he or she wished to bind one into servitude.
Release me!
her mind screamed.
Release the bait?
Rathe's harsh, soulless cackling rang inside her head.
Her feet finally found purchase on something solid, and the oily smokiness around her began to dissipate, turning into the form of the archdemon lord Rathe. She didn't recognize the room, but from the large, glass-like, obsidian throne upon a raised dais, she had an idea this was Rathe's private domain.
The expanse of black marble beneath her feet seemed to float on a lake of molten lava. The red-orange glow of it reflected in the highly polished surfaces of the floor and the throne. While she could see the walls crafted of black volcanic rock, there seemed to be no ceiling, which disappeared hundreds of feet above her into stygian darkness.
“Welcome to my home,” Rathe said as he smoothed his immaculate, long-tailed dress coat and sat upon his throne, looking every inch the dapper gentleman out for an evening's pleasure. The only difference was that his snowy white cravat made the tightly stretched, waxy skin on his emaciated face look even more pale and dead, and accented the yellow of his eyes. His dark hair was slicked back, and rubies sparkled like drops of blood at his wrists and in the pin in his cravat. His mouth was a deep, dark slash in his face, just below his blade-like nose.
Alexa's mind raced, trying to think of a means of escape. Winn would move Heaven and Hell to find her.
If
he believed she was alive. “You think to draw Mr. Jackson here?”
Rathe's chuckle was mirthless, cold, cruel, and slyly calculating. “No, my dear. We are going to pay him a little visit once he is out of range of help from the meddling Hunters in Queen Victoria's court. And then, I will retrieve the piece of the Book of Legend from him. On the night of the dark moon I will open the Gates of Nyx and usher in a new world order.
Mine
.”
Alexa lifted her chin. “And what about me?” No matter what Rathe threatened, no matter what Rathe did to her, she couldn't allow Winn to sacrifice his third of the Book. The fate of the world depended on the Chosen's uniting the pieces of the Book, so they could seal the Gates.
His pupils widened like a cat on the prowl. “Yes, what about you, vampire? It's not often that my children are so disobedient and difficult. Perhaps you should be disciplined.”
A cold wash of dread sluiced through Alexa's system. In six hundred years she'd seen a lot of Rathe's handiwork, and all of it chilled her to the marrow of her bones. While there were as many archdemon lords as there were archangels, among the Darkin, Rathe had a well-deserved reputation for being the most sadistic and malevolent.
She'd personally seen him take the heads of his most prized conquests, only to discover later he'd done so merely to decorate his watch chain. Shrinking and gilding the heads, he kept his enemies sentient so he could impose additional pain and anguish on them whenever he suffered from ennui.
From across the throne room she saw his watch chain, gleaming and golden, heavy with living fobs. She placed a gloved hand about her throat as her stomach rolled at the sight. She dragged her gaze back to Rathe's ghastly face.
“Do you blame us for rebelling?” She used her smoothest, most sensual tone. Cool. Unafraid. Regal. Alexa felt none of those things. There were few times in her six hundred years of existence that she'd felt bone-deep, abject fear. Today was one of those days. “Vampires have to eat,” she reminded him smoothly. “If you rid the earth of the humans, what shall we feast upon?”
Rathe leaned forward slightly as if her words intrigued him. “And is that what Mr. Jackson was to you, a traveling snack?”
Alexa did her best to keep her reactions in check, every tick, every swallow, so as not to betray herself or Winn. “I was ordered to assist him in relocating our piece of the Book.” In years of negotiations, she'd found sticking as closely to the facts as possible earned the best results. She had indeed been ordered by Vladimir to assist Winn, but nothing had been said about falling in love with him.
Deep down in the region of her stone-cold heart, a pang of yearning took her by surprise. For while she had told Winn she loved him, she had never heard the same from him.
“Ah yes, dear Vladimir. I shall have to see that he is burned thoroughly once I've opened the Gates, to pay for leading this little rebellion.”
Alexa couldn't stop the shudder that shook her. After seeing what fire had done to Kostick, she could only imagine the horrid suffering that awaited Vlad if the Chosen should fail.
“What if I can help you get the Book?” There was a slim chance that she could help Winn if she could escape. But with her here in Rathe's control, she knew beyond a doubt that he'd use her as an advantage over Winn, jeopardizing their chances at closing the Gates. Winn was so responsible, so utterly devoted to doing the right thing no matter what the odds, that she knew he'd falter only if her existence or that of his brothers was at stake.
Rathe rubbed his fingers and thumb together. “You wish to make a deal with me?”
Everything in Alexa rebelled against the idea, and she held back the bile surging hard in the back of her throat. “I am a diplomat. Bargaining is what I do.”
“Well, you've already proven you won't give me the Book, but you could still be of use to me. What is it you want?”
“I want you to promise that you'll free those imprisoned at Castle Barranoch and won't seek retribution on the vampire court, or on Winchester Jackson.”
“That's a high price. What are you willing to give me in exchange?”
Alexa's stomach swished uncomfortably. What did she possibly have that Rathe could want? He didn't care for influence in the vampire court. Couldn't be bothered to consider her servitude of worth. But he liked power. All kinds of power.
“My immortality.”
Rathe rolled the little gold fobs on his watch chain as he contemplated the offer. One squeaked in pain, but Alexa averted her gaze. It was all she could do to stand here and bear Rathe's penetrating gaze. Alexa knew the Darkin lord. He wanted power, all of it he could get. If she gave him her Darkin powers, it would add to his own, and in doing so she would become a mere mortal. She'd be helpless against him; worse, she would be a traitor to her own kind, turning her back on the Darkin realm. Heavy burdens for her to bear, but it was a small price to pay if it ensured the safety of the court and of Winn.
Rathe sat forward slightly. “I counter your offer.”
Alexa lifted her chin a notch. Negotiations were her specialty, and she'd expected this. “What do you propose?”
“You are an old and powerful vampire so your offer has merit. But I want more.”
“What?”
“Once you've given me your immortality, you will accompany me to see the Slayer.
If
he chooses you over the Book, then and only then will I free you.”
It was a horrible choice.
“And whether he chooses me or not, you will swear to spare the court, my minons, and him?”
Rathe frowned. “I so swear.”
Her chest swelled. Rathe's oath was as unbreakable as were the ancient gods'. Once made, he could not take it back. If she could protect Winn, then he would at least have a chance. She took a moment to pretend to consider the offer. “I accept your terms.”
“Excellent.” Rathe opened his mouth wide, and the sickening black smoke that stank of sulfur roiled out, coiling about her like a constricting snake. It blocked her ability to see and hear and pressed upon her with such force that it cracked her bones. She cried out in pain as she felt her body being pulled and stretched. The smoke filled her nose and throat, burning, stripping them raw. She'd never dreamed that losing her immortality would cause such unbearable agony. Somewhere in the haze of pain she blessedly lost consciousness.