Black dawn (32 page)

Hunter
Redfern
was standing there smiling. Syl
via was behind him. And behind
them,
crowded
together, were armed guards.

"We've had to dispose of the few idiots who in
sisted on remaining loyal to you," Hunter said ami
ably. His eyes were shining like the purest gold.
"The castle is now under our control. But do go on
with your plans, it's very sweet to hear you trying
to save each other."

"And it's no use trying to pretend," Sylvia added
spitefully. "We heard everything. We knew you couldn't be trusted, so we let you come down here on purpose, to see what you'd say."

For someone who'd known
Delos
a while, she
didn't understand him very well, Maggie thought.
Maggie could have told her that pretending was the
last thing that would occur to
Delos
. Instead he did
what Maggie knew he would; he launched himself at Hunter
Redfern's
throat.

Delos
was young and strong and very angry but it was no contest. After Sylvia had squeaked and
withdrawn, the guards all came to help Hunter.
After that it was over quickly.

"Put him in with his friends," Hunter said, brush
ing off his sleeves. "It's a real pity to see my only
surviving heir come to this," he added, once
Delos
had been kicked and thrown into the cell. For a
moment there was that note of genuine feeling in his voice that Maggie had heard before. Then the golden eyes went cold and
more bitter
than ever. "I think tomorrow morning we'll have a very special hunt," he said. "And then there will be only
three Wild Powers to worry about."

This time, when the guards left, they took all the
flares with them.

"I'm sorry," Maggie whispered, trying to inspect
Delos
's bruises by touch alone. "
Delos
, I'm sorry
...
I didn't know
... "

"It doesn't matter," he said, holding her hands.
"It would have happened eventually anyway."

"For a vampire, you didn't put up much of a
fight," Jeanne's voice came from the back of the cell.

Maggie frowned, but
Delos
turned toward her
and spoke without defensiveness. "That witch bound more than just the blue fire when she put
this spell on my arm," he said. "She took all my
vampire powers. I'm essentially a human until she
removes it."

"
Aradia
?"
Maggie said. "Can you do anything? I
mean, I know only Sylvia is supposed to be able to
take the spell off, but
..."

Aradia
knelt beside them, graceful in the dark
ness. She touched
Delos
's arm gently, then sighed.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Even if I were at full power, there's nothing I could do."

Maggie let out her breath.

"That's the only thing I regret,"
Delos
said.
"That
I can't save you."

"You have to stop thinking about that," Maggie
whispered.

She was filled with a strange resignation. It
wasn't that she was giving up. But she was very tired, physically and emotionally, and there was
nothing she could do right
now....

And maybe nothing ever, she thought dimly. She
felt something steadying her and realized it was
Delos
's arm. She leaned against him, glad of his
warmth and solidity in the darkness. There was a
tremendous comfort in just being held by him.

Sometimes just having fought is important, she
thought.
Even if you don't win.

Her eyelids were terribly heavy. It felt absolutely wonderful to close them, just for a
moment ...

She only woke up once during the night, and that
was because of
Delos
. She could sense something in him
something in his mind. He seemed to be
asleep, but very far away, and very agitated.

Was he calling my name?
she
wondered. I thought
i
heard
that ...

He was thrashing and muttering, now. Maggie
leaned close and caught a few words.

"I love you
... I did love you ...
always remem
ber that
..."

"
Delos
!"
She shook him. "
Delos
, what are you
doing?"

He came awake with a start.

"Nothing."

But she knew. She remembered those words
she'd heard them before she had actually met
Delos
on the mountain.

"It was my dream. You were ... going back in
time somehow, weren't you? And giving me that
dream I had, warning me to get away from this
valley." She frowned. "But how can you? I thought
you couldn't use your powers."

"I don't think this took vampire powers," he said,
sounding almost guilty. "It was more-I think it
was just the bond between us.
The
soulmate
thing.
I don't even know how I did it. I just
went to sleep
and started dreaming about
the you
of the past. It
was
as if I was searching for you-and then I found
you. I made the connection. I don't know if it's ever
been done before, that kind of time travel."

Maggie shook her head. "But you already know it didn't work. The dream didn't change anything.
I didn't leave as soon as I woke up in the cart,
because I'm here. And if I
had
left, I would never have met you, and then you wouldn't have sent
the dream...."

"I know," he said, and his voice was tired and a
bit forlorn. He sounded very young, just then. "But
it was worth a try."

CHAPTER
19

The hunt of your lives," Hunter
Redfern
said. He
was standing handsome and erect, smiling easily.
The nobles were gathered around him, and Maggie
even saw some familiar faces in the crowd.

That rough man from
Delos
's memories-the one who grabbed his arm, she thought dreamily. And the woman who put the first binding
spell
on him.

They were crowded in the courtyard, their faces
eager. The first pale light was just touching the
sky-not that the sun was visible, of course. But it was enough to turn the clouds pearly and cast an
eerie, almost greenish luminescence over the
scene below.

"Two
humans,
a witch, and a renegade prince,"
Hunter proclaimed. He was enjoying himself hugely, Maggie could tell. "You'll never have an
other chance at prey like this."

Maggie gripped
Delos
's hand tightly.

She
was
frightened but
at
the
same
time strangely proud. If the nobles around Hunter were
expecting their prey to cower or beg, they were
going to be disappointed.

They were alone, the four of them, in a little
empty space in the square.
Maggie and
Aradia
and Jeanne in their slave clothes,
Delos
in his leggings
and shirtsleeves.
A little wind blew and stirred
Maggie's hair, but otherwise they were perfectly still.

Aradia
, of course, was always dignified. Just now
her face was grave and sad, but there was no sign of anger or fear in it. She stood at her full height,
her huge clear eyes turned toward the crowd, as if they were all welcome guests that she had invited.

Jeanne was more rumpled. Her red hair was di
sheveled and her tunic was wrinkled, but there was
a grim smile on her angular face and a wild battle
light in her green eyes. She was one prey that was
going to fight, Maggie knew.

Maggie herself was doing her best to live up to
the others. She stood as
tall as she could, knowing
she would never be as
impressive as
Aradia
, or
as devil-may-care as Jeanne, but trying at least to look as
if dying came easy to her.

Delos
was magnificent.

In his shirtsleeves, he was more of a prince than
Hunter
Redfern
would ever be. He looked at the
crowd of nobles who had all promised to be loyal
to him and were now thirsting for his blood-and
he didn't get mad.

He tried to talk to them.

"Watch what happens here," he said, his voice
carrying easily across the square. "And don't forget
it. Are you really going to follow a man who can
do this to his own great-grandson? How long is it
going to be before he turns on
you?
Before you find
yourselves in front of a pack of hunting animals?"

"Shut him up," Hunter said. He tried to say it jo
vially, but Maggie could hear the
fury
underneath.

And the command didn't seem to make much sense. Maggie could see the nobles looking at each
other-who was supposed to shut him up, and
how?

"There are some things
thatt
have to be stopped,"

Delos
said. "And this man is one of them. I admit
it, I was willing to go along with him-but that was
because I was blind and stupid. I know better
now-and I knew better before he turned against
me. You all know me. Would I be standing here,
willing to give up my life for no reason?"

There was the tiniest stirring among the nobles.

Maggie looked at them hopefully-and then her
heart sank.

They simply weren't used to thinking for them
selves, or maybe they were used to thinking only
of
themselves. But she could tell there wasn't mate
rial for a rebellion here.

And the slaves weren't going to be of any help,
either. The guards had weapons, they didn't. They
were frightened, they were unhappy, but this kind
of hunt was something they'd seen before. They
knew that it couldn't be stopped.

"This girl came to us peacefully, trying to keep
the alliance between witches and vampire,"
Delos
was saying, his hand on
Aradia's
shoulder. "And in
return we tried to kill her. I'm telling you right
now, that by spilling her innocent blood, you're all
committing a crime that will come back to haunt
you."

Another little stirring
among women, Maggie
thought. Witches, maybe?

"Shut him up," Hunter said, almost bellowing it.

And this time he seemed to be saying it to a spe
cific person. Maggie followed his gaze and saw Syl
via near them.

"Some beasts have to be muzzled before they can
be hunted," Hunter said, looking straight at Sylvia.
"So take care of it now. The hunt is about to begin."

Sylvia stepped closer to
Delos
, a little uneasily.
He stared back at her levelly, as if daring her to
wonder what he'd do when she got nearer.

"Guards!"
Hunter
Redfern
said, sounding tired.

The guards moved in. They had two different
kinds of lances, a distant part of Maggie's mind
noted. One tipped with metal-that must be for hu
mans and witches-and one tipped with wood.

For vampires, she thought. If
Delos
wasn't care
ful, he might get skewered in the heart before the
hunt even began.

"Now shut his lying mouth," Hunter
Redfern
said.

Sylvia took her basket off her arm.

"In the new order after the millennium, we'll
have hunts like this every day," Hunter
Redfern
was saying, trying to undo the damage that his
great-grandson had done. "Each of us will have a city of humans to hunt.
A city of throats to cut, a
city of flesh to eat."

Sylvia was fishing in her basket, not afraid to
stand close to the vampire prince since he was sur
rounded by a forest of lances.

"Sylvia,"
Aradia
said quietly.

Sylvia looked up, startled. Maggie saw her eyes,
the color of violets.

"Each of us will be a prince-" Hunter
Redfern
was saying.

"Sylvia Weald,"
Aradia
said.

Sylvia looked down. "Don't talk to me," she whis
pered. "You're not
I'm not one of you anymore."

"All you have to do is follow me," Hunter was
saying.

"Sylvia Weald,"
Aradia
said. "You were born a
witch. Your name means the greenwood, the sacred grove. You are a daughter of
Hellewise
, and
you will be until you die. You are my sister."

"I am not," Sylvia spat.

"You can't help it. Nothing can break the bond.
In your deepest heart you know that. And as
Maiden of all the witches, and in the name of
Helle
wise
Hearth-Woman, I adjure you:
remove your

spell
from this boy."

It was the strangest thing-but it didn't seem to
be
Aradia
who said it. Oh, it was
Aradia's
voice, all
right, Maggie thought, and it was
Aradia
standing
there. But at that moment she seemed to be fused
with another form-a sort of shining aura all
around her.
Someone who was part of her, but
more than she was.

It looked, Maggie thought dizzily, like a tall
woman with hair as pale as Sylvia's and large
brown eyes.