Autumn Bones (32 page)

Since that was a dangerous, possibly cataclysmic idea, we kept sparring, rotating around each other like a pair of binary stars until Stefan called a halt.

This time, he closed his eyes and took a moment to collect himself. I was exhausted and there was sweat trickling down the back of my neck, but I felt good. Not only that, I realized that although I’d sheathed
dauda-dagr
, I hadn’t dropped my shield altogether when Stefan stopped pressing me; it had already become instinctive to keep a faint spark kindled in my thoughts.

Stefan opened his eyes and smiled at me. “Well done. You
have
been practicing.”

“Yep.”

As before, he went into the kitchen to pour a couple of glasses of water. I wandered over to the display case with his father’s ceremonial shield, gazing at the dark-haired knight kneeling before his queen, wondering about the story behind it. Stefan returned to hand me a glass of water without comment.

“Thanks,” I said to him. “I really needed this today.” I smiled wryly, remembering the bond between us. “But then you probably knew that, didn’t you?”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I sensed your unrest.”

“My best friend, Jen—Jennifer Cassopolis, you met her the other day—her older sister’s been out at the House of Shadows for eight years.” I took a drink of water. “This morning, Jen got an invitation to her sister’s rising.”

“I see.”

I shook my head. “No, see, here’s the thing. I was out there last week. There was an, um, altercation. Under the terms of Lady Eris’s decree, I had a legitimate chance to take down the vampire who’s turning Jen’s sister. And I didn’t do it.” My temper rose like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes of my temporary sense of calm, my anger again directed at my own hesitation. “I mean, I didn’t know at the time that he was turning her. But I didn’t fucking
do
it, Stefan.”

Stefan pointed at the couch. “Sit.”

I sat.

He sat in a chair opposite me. “Do you think it would have made a difference?”

“Well . . . yeah. Obviously.”

Stefan gave me a look that was hard to describe—rueful, compassionate, maybe a little patronizing without meaning to be. The kind of look that spanned a six-hundred-year gap’s worth of life experience. “Your friend’s sister made her choice years ago, Daisy. Either she would have found another sponsor or wasted away trying.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “Okay, probably. But we’ll never know for sure, will we?”

“No.”

I have to say, I appreciated the fact that Stefan didn’t mince words. He turned his head to gaze out the window, and we sat for a moment without speaking. I contemplated the clean, crisp, strongly drawn lines of his profile, his high, rugged cheekbones. I could see the resemblance to the kneeling knight on the shield.

He looked back at me, his pupils steady. “At least she had the luxury of making a choice, no matter how unwise or uninformed.”

“You had no idea that you would become . . . Outcast?” I asked softly. I mean, I assumed it, but I didn’t really know for sure.

“No one does.” Tilting his head, Stefan Ludovic regarded the ceiling. “I loved my father,” he said, apropos of nothing. “I revered and admired him above all men, and I do believe he was worthy of my regard. It was a golden age in the history of Bohemia—indeed, in the history of Europe—and my father was a nobleman in every sense of the word—a just and compassionate ruler, a highly educated and visionary thinker, a valiant knight. But he wed a weak-willed woman.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It was not his fault.” Stefan glanced at me once, then looked away again. “In those days, the aristocracy did not wed for love. It was a union of political expedience. But while my father was away on one of King Charles’s campaigns, she allowed my uncle to seduce her. And upon my father’s return, my uncle, his own brother, poisoned him.”

I swallowed. “Um, isn’t that the plot of—”

“Yes,” he said before I could finish. “It is very like it. But although I was my father’s only son, I was no Hamlet. I was a man grown and a knight in my own right, a Knight of the Cross with the Red Star. I was a member of a branch of the order affiliated with a hospital in Prague that specialized in occult afflictions. When my father’s spirit appeared to me in a dream, crying out for vengeance, I knew it was a true vision.”

I set my glass of water down carefully on a marble coaster, trying not to let it clink. “I see.”

“My uncle was everything my father was not,” Stefan continued, still not looking at me. “Craven, ambitious, untruthful. But he could be charming, and he knew how to evoke pity. He was born with a twisted leg, which prohibited him from service in his majesty’s army. When I returned to my ancestral home of Žatlovy, I stood in the great hall and accused him of my father’s murder. He denied it. He denied it vehemently.” He looked back at me, pupils surging to eclipse his irises as his voice turned savage. “And then he
laughed
and told me I could never prove it.”

My shield flared from a spark to a buckler-size disk.

Stefan closed his eyes, regaining control. “Forgive me.”

“No, it’s all right,” I said. “
I’m
sorry. I want to know, of course I want to know, but I didn’t mean to pry.”

He opened his eyes. “You didn’t.”

I cleared my throat. “So you killed your uncle?”

“Yes,” Stefan said simply. “I struck him down then and there, with the very sword my father wielded at the Battle of Crécy. In a fit of pure rage and loathing, I killed my uncle, a defenseless cripple. Acting out of the depths of my profound and abiding love for my father, with the commandment to honor him blazing like a beacon in my thoughts, I exacted vengeance. I killed his treacherous, villainous, murderous brother in cold blood.” He stretched out his hands, contemplating them. “I have sought to relive that moment a thousand times in my memories. To this day, I do not regret it. Although,” he added, “I can still hear my mother’s screams.”

I swallowed again, wordless. I wanted to ask what had happened next, how Stefan had become Outcast, but my throat was too tight.

“My uncle’s guards drew their poniards and fell upon me.” Stefan answered my unasked question in a dry tone. “The very same guards sworn to my father’s service not a month beforehand.” He touched his chest and his back and sides—here and here and here. “There were many of them. Although I fought, they slew me.”

I found my voice. “But you came back.”

He gave a brief, brusque nod. “Yes. On my bier in the chapel. I returned to myself. Alive, awake . . . and Outcast.”

There were a few thousand questions knocking around in my thoughts, but they were banging up against a pretty strong sense that Stefan Ludovic was gently but firmly closing the door on this conversation. He’d opened himself up to me as much as he was going to today, which, frankly, was a lot.

I mean, seriously . . . Stefan was basically freakin’ Hamlet, only less indecisive? That was huge.

“Thank you,” I said to him. “You didn’t need to tell me that.”

“I know.” He held my gaze. “You’ve shared a great deal with me, Daisy, much of it not of your choosing. I wanted to do this.”

“I’m grateful.”

“I did not do it to earn your gratitude.” Stefan’s expression was unreadable, but I could sense the hunger behind it.

Damn. Maybe he really did have feelings for me.

If he did, it didn’t appear that he was going to declare them today. I let the silence stretch between us. When it became obvious that he had nothing further to say, I returned to the original topic. “Okay, well, I’m going to Bethany Cassopolis’s rising in two days,” I said. “Any advice?”

Stefan frowned. “A newly turned vampire’s rising is a volatile time,” he said. “Physically and emotionally. While it may be a transformation of their own choosing, no one is ever truly prepared for it. Many panic upon rising. I would offer to accompany you if I thought it wise . . . but I fear I do not.”

Good to know. “No problem,” I said. “I’ve got backup.”

“The lamia?”

I shook my head. “The cop.”

“I see.” Stefan steepled his fingers. “I would not anticipate difficulty. The newly risen possess considerable strength, but it takes many years to develop more dangerous skills, such as vampiric hypnosis, to their fullest potential. The others will be prepared to manage the situation, and it is my impression that Lady Eris is competent in ministering to her brood.”

“So I should just . . . let it happen?” I asked.

He gave me another of those centuries-old, gap-spanning looks. “It has already happened, Daisy. You are merely there to observe the culmination as a courtesy.”

“Right.”

We gazed at each other.

“You should go,” Stefan said presently, his pupils waxing, stabilizing with an effort. “My control is . . . strained.”

I stood, hesitating. I couldn’t resist asking. “Okay, look, I’m sorry, but . . . is it about you? Hamlet?”

He summoned a faint smile. “Are you asking if I knew William Shakespeare? No. By all accounts, the play is based on an old Scandinavian folktale. But if he had put words into my mouth, they would have been Laertes’, not Hamlet’s.”

Since I couldn’t remember which one was Laertes, I held my tongue.

Stefan looked into the distance. “To hell, allegiance!” he murmured. “Vows to the blackest devil! Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation. To this point I stand.” His voice dropped an octave, deep and menacing. “Let come what comes. Only I’ll be revenged most thoroughly for my father.”

I shivered.

Words, they were just words. But they were words that evoked a moment that defined the entirety of Stefan Ludovic’s existence. I hadn’t forgotten how Cooper had described it: that one terrible, horrible, glorious moment that could never be taken back, that could never be regained. The moment that he craved to re-create, forever and always.

And couldn’t.

I wanted to say something profound and reassuring, but the truth was, I had no idea what that might be.

So instead I left.

Thirty

T
wo days later—or to be m
ore precise, two days and a night later—I returned to the House of Shadows.

In accordance with the instructions on the engraved invitation, Jen and I arrived at eleven thirty. The temperature had dropped and it was a chilly night, more like October than September. We stood shivering in the courtyard for a few minutes, waiting for Cody to pull up in a cruiser and join us. God knows what would happen if things did go wrong, but at least he looked reassuring and official in his cold-weather police duty jacket.

“Are you okay?” he asked Jen.

She gave him a wan smile. “Not really.”

“Let’s get this over with.” I banged the door knocker.

Unsurprisingly, the undead doorman had a problem with Cody’s presence. I suppose the only surprising thing was that he didn’t have a problem with mine. Jen was prepared to claim me as family if necessary, but apparently being Hel’s liaison included the privilege of attending vampire risings.

Lucky me.

In the end, Lady Eris was summoned, arriving in a cloud of irritation and impatience. “There is no justification for your presence here, wolf.”

Cody planted his hands on his utility belt. “Are you kidding? There’s a dead woman on the premises.”

Lady Eris shot him a glare. “Unrisen, not dead.”

He shrugged. “Until she rises, she’s dead. And as long as she’s dead, police presence is justified.”

“He’s right,” I added, trying my best to sound authoritative. “He’s here at my request. Just in case.”

“There is no time to argue the matter.” She pursed her carmine lips and turned her glare on me. “Fine. The wolf may remain on the premises, but he may not attend the ceremony. Once he has confirmed the initiate has risen, he will depart. Does that suffice to resolve the issue?”

Cody and I exchanged a quick glance. He gave me a faint nod. It was probably the best compromise we were going to get.

“Yeah,” I said. “It does.”

With that settled, the denizens of the House of Shadows assembled to file through the manor into the . . . crypt, I guess you’d call it. Back in the day, it was probably a cellar storage room, with stairs leading down from an aisle adjacent to an incongruous kitchen. As Jen and I were escorted past it, I wondered briefly why Lady Eris’s vampire brood hadn’t disassembled it, then remembered that their mortal acolytes still required human sustenance.

Anyway.

The walls of the crypt were covered with stucco, and dozens of candles burned in niches and on stands arrayed around the cellar. A fresco of the night sky adorned the ceiling, smudged with decades’ worth of candle smoke. A big slab of marble like a sarcophagus sat hulking in the center of the space.

Jen let out a faint sound, reaching involuntarily for my hand. I grabbed hers, squeezing hard.

Bethany Cassopolis lay motionless on the marble slab, looking bloodless and pretty fucking dead. Her black hair was fanned out over the marble, her hands were folded on her chest, and her normally Mediterranean olive-toned skin was pale and ashen. The fact that she looked so much like her sister made it even more unnerving. Weirdly, a length of scarlet ribbon had been run beneath her chin and tied in a bow atop her head.

I took a deep breath. After the night’s chill outside, the air in the crypt was close and stifling, but although I was beginning to sweat under the leather of my secondhand motorcycle jacket, the sweat turned cold on my skin.

“Brethren and sistren,” Lady Eris said in a mellifluous voice. Okay, so apparently
sistren
is an actual word. “We gather here tonight to celebrate the initiation of a new member into our midst. Hail, sister!”

“Hail, sister!” a dozen-plus voices echoed.

Creepy, right?

She glanced around the crypt, her gaze settling on Jen. “Does the family of the initiate wish to bid her mortal sibling a farewell?”

“Are you
serious
?” Jen blurted. Lady Eris raised one perfect eyebrow. “Jesus!” Jen stared at her sister. Unheeded tears spilled down her cheeks. “Jesus, Beth! Did you
have
to?”