Bloodstone (36 page)

“Make it Monday morning.”

“Monday morning. Let me write that down.” He paused, and I pictured him searching for a pencil and paper on his cluttered desk. “Okay. Get me the key to Kane’s apartment so I can pass it on. I won’t get the fake ID done in time, but I’ll email the file to an associate of mine in Washington, along with the number of a credit card in Kane’s name. The credit card will already have some charges on it—groceries, meals, that sort of thing. When the new ‘Mr. Kane’ gets into town, he can pick up the cards at my associate’s establishment. He buys some more dinners on the credit card, flashes his ID a few places, and—ta da!—plenty of evidence he was outside of Massachusetts during the containment order.”

The whole scheme hinged on the availability of Carlos’s norm friend, so he said he’d call back to confirm. I explained the plan to Kane, and by the time I finished, Carlos had called back to say everything was a go. I managed not to faint when he told me how much it would cost, not including expenses.

Kane would be accounted for, that was the important thing. Besides, he was paying.

Next I called Daniel. “What’s Hampson thinking with this containment order?”

“What do you expect, Vicky?” He sounded both exhausted and exasperated. “ There’s no secret lair in the abandoned subway tunnel—we checked.” No surprise that Daniel hadn’t found anything, either. “Hampson was furious about time we wasted on that dead end. I told him about Morfran possession and how it pointed to a human killer. Roxana showed him the rune and how it fit the pattern of murder sites. He blew it all off. Called it ‘mumbo jumbo’ and fired Roxana as a consultant.”

“So he locks down Deadtown?” It was the stupidest response possible.

“What else would he do? He won’t listen to me. He’s convinced the murderer is from there. The motorist who said he saw a ‘monster,’ the mutilation of the bodies, even the fact that a variant of the damn plague virus has appeared in the wild—in his mind, it all adds up to a paranormal killer.”

“Is the lab still under quarantine?”

“Yes, until the end of the week. But no symptoms yet. Feels like the only piece of good news I’ve had all year.”

What a mess I’d made for Daniel—the virus sample, a German shepherd in his crime site, information that did nothing but infuriate his boss. But the information was important, and I needed Daniel to act on it. Lives depended on it.

“Daniel, you know that rune pattern is valid. Tomorrow night, the Reaper will be looking for a victim somewhere near the Boylston Street T station. No matter what Hampson thinks.”

“I know. I’ll do what I can, but Hampson has directed nearly all our resources to patrolling the perimeter of Deadtown. He’s even convinced Governor Sugden to call in the National Guard.”

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious. Hampson argued that the zombies are likely to riot. Apparently, after that protest march got out of hand, the governor agreed with him.”

Wow. Sugden, whose own daughter was a zombie, was usually a friend to the paranormals. Now he’d ordered the tightest lockdown since the plague. And all because some zombies pushed past the first checkpoint to have a beer in the Zone? Nothing had gotten out of hand; they hadn’t even tried to march into the human part of Boston.

Hampson had to be feeling a lot of pressure from his Humans First buddies to use these murders to advance the cause. But his focus on Deadtown was ridiculously shortsighted. “So while the cops and the National Guard tighten the noose around Deadtown,” I said, “the Reaper will get on with his work behind their backs.”

“Like I said, I’ll do what I can.” Tension strained his voice. “And Vicky, I’m not kidding. I know what you’re like—stay away from this. Don’t try to sneak out of Deadtown. Don’t try to catch this guy yourself. Let the police handle it.” He hung up, making sure he got the final word.

Let the police handle it.
Those same police who’d be playing ring-around-the-rosie around Deadtown? Somehow, I didn’t think so.

 

 

I WAS OUT FOR HALF AN HOUR GETTING THE KEYS FOR Kane’s D.C. place and delivering them to Carlos. When I got home, I heard Mab moving around in the bedroom and went to see how she was doing. I knocked on the door and pushed it open. The creature who sat on the edge of the bed barely resembled my aunt. She looked like a wizened gnome, or one of those preserved bodies that archeologists dug up from peat bogs. Her gray hair had thinned; I could see her scalp through it. Her feet dangled over the side of my bed, not touching the floor.

“I’m afraid I need some help getting to the lavatory.”

I lifted her to her feet. Mab was normally a couple of inches taller than my five foot six, but she’d shrunken so much she barely came up to my shoulder. Although she leaned heavily against me as we crossed the hall to the bathroom, I barely felt her weight.

When I returned her to bed, she patted the mattress. “Sit, child.”

“Can I get you anything first? A cup of tea?”

“I’m past any need or desire for nourishment.” She patted the bed again. “Come, sit close. I can barely see you. Give me your hand, child.”

I sat and took her hand. Mab had said that, without the bloodstone, her body would rapidly catch up with her true age. But she looked older than any living person I’d ever seen. “Mab, how old are you?”

“In this lifetime? A shade over three hundred years.” Most of the Cerddorion lived human-length lifespans, but Mab had told me once that some of our kind live much longer. And with the bloodstone, perhaps she’d pushed the limit even further. “You probably think I’m no different from the Old Ones, trying to live forever. It’s not that, child. I’ve had to hold on; I’ve waited so long for my successor.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “There have been many apprentices over the years, many fine demon fighters. But always I waited for Victory.”

This speech sounded way too much like she was getting ready to say good-bye, to pass her demon-fighting mantle to me. Gently, I released her hand. “I’m not ready to be your successor.”

“Not yet, it’s true. There is much you need to learn, and I still hope to be the one to teach you. I haven’t given up, child. Not when there’s a chance we can retrieve the bloodstone.” That was good to hear. It sounded more like the Mab I knew. “Still, when one looks back over the past, there are things one feels the need to explain.”

I thought about the twenty-year-old misunderstanding between her and Gwen, who’d never accept any explanation other than what she’d seen with her own horrified eyes. But nothing like that stood between Mab and me.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“Yes, I do. I want you to understand what’s behind my feud with Myrddin.”

I hadn’t wanted to tire Mab out with my questions about that. But now she wanted to talk. “Were you Nimuë?”

She shook her head. “Nimuë was my sister.” Her face looked sadder than I’d ever seen it. “Myrddin killed her.”

For a long moment, neither of us said anything. Mab’s murky eyes went distant, and she held out a hand, as though reaching across time. I folded my hand around hers, and she turned to me.

“What happened, Mab?”

“In that lifetime, I was Viviane.”

“The Lady of the Lake.” I recalled the white-sleeved arm that rose from my dream-lake to hand me the bloodstone. Mab had taken that form in my dreamscape.

She nodded. “It was all so long ago. Several lifetimes, and my lives are long. I was a demon fighter and priestess of Ceridwen. Not much different from how you know me, although I was much, much younger.” Her voice softened. “So very young. I was eighteen, Nimuë was all of sixteen. We’d heard rumors of a handsome, mysterious man who lived in the woods. Being silly girls, we went to find him. We wanted an adventure, but there was no challenge to it. Myrddin meant for us to find him.” She glanced at me sidelong. “And handsome he was indeed. His teeth were better then.”

I could believe that. A millennium or two without dental care would take its toll.

“Myrddin charmed us. He flattered and entertained us. And he tried to seduce me. You see, what he really wanted was a son.” Demi-demons have a very low rate of reproduction—most of their females are barren, and when they do manage to conceive and carry to term, the death rate for infants is high. Myrddin must have felt he’d have a better chance of success with a Cerddorion female.

“I resisted. I was a shapeshifter and a demonslayer; I didn’t want to risk having a child. He tried to ensnare me with magic, but I could feel the tendrils of his spell. I refused to see him anymore. I forbade Nimuë from going anywhere near him.” She sighed deeply. “But my sister was sixteen and thought she was in love.”

“He got Nimuë pregnant.”

“She trusted him, and he used her, not caring how it might hurt her.” She scowled. “The pregnancy tore her apart from the inside. How she cried from the sheer pain of it. The baby clawed at her, she said; it burned her. I tried to give her herbs that would end the pregnancy, but she wouldn’t take them. She ran away to be with Myrddin, to give him his son. She said she wanted them to be a family.” Her voice caught in a tearless sob. “For weeks, I searched for her.”

“Did you find her?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.

“I found her corpse. Myrddin had ripped the child from her womb and left her to bleed to death on the ground.” Mab rocked back and forth, moaning softly, as if she’d just this minute discovered her sister’s mutilated body. But then she straightened. “I vowed to make him pay for what he’d done.”

Mab lifted her chin, and a defiant pride showed in her face. “I shifted my shape to become the exact image of Nimuë. Not as she died, but as she looked when Myrddin first saw her. In that shape, I entered Myrddin’s dreams. Do you know what happens when a beautiful young girl enters a man’s dreams?” She smiled. “She gets whatever she wants.”

“So that’s why the legends say Nimuë stole Myrddin’s magic.”

“Yes, but it was I, in Nimuë’s image. Myrddin gave Nimuë his secrets—and gladly—but it was Viviane who took them. Only one thing did he withhold: the location of his son. Whenever I mentioned the child, Myrddin would remember that Nimuë was dead and banish her image from his dreamscape. I tried entering his dreams in other guises, but it didn’t work. He refused to divulge that secret.”

“But he taught you the spell you needed?”

“He did, and I used it.” Again, her eyes looked into the past. “One night, Myrddin slept in his forest under a yew tree. I sent an avatar of Nimuë into his dreams to distract him. As Viviane, I stood beside his sleeping body and wove the binding spell. When the spell was too far advanced to resist, I woke him. I didn’t want that bastard spending eternity in happy dreams of Nimuë; I wanted him to suffer. He saw me, felt the binding spell, knew I’d trapped him—and why. I made certain he knew why. The tree began to absorb him. He struggled, but I told him it was no use. I told him I’d find his demon spawn and kill it. He laughed at me then, said I’d never find the boy. Just before the tree took him, his arm shot out from the trunk. He pointed at me, his face straining forward so he could speak. And Myrddin cursed me.”

I shuddered. “What was the curse?”

“That I’d remember. No matter how many lives I lived, I’d remember that one, as vividly as when each moment was new. When he returned to take his revenge, he wanted to be sure I knew why.”

It was a terrible curse. To experience that trauma, lifetime after lifetime, the pain never dimming. Even if he never returned, Myrddin had taken his revenge.

“I never did find Pryce,” Mab said. “Not in that lifetime, though I searched far and wide. Myrddin had fostered the boy with a human family. After several years and many rumors, I discovered the family’s name. But when I traveled to them, I learned that Pryce had murdered them all and run away. The boy wasn’t yet ten years old. And so it went for many years. Pryce left a long trail of death and destruction, but I was always a step or two behind him.”

“So how did we get so lucky to have him in our lives?”

“Eventually, he found me. He came to Maenllyd, called me ‘auntie,’ and told me he wouldn’t rest until he’d destroyed everything I love—and finally me.”

 

 

I WANTED TO LET MAB REST, BUT SHE INSISTED SHE HAD more to say. “Let me speak now, child, while my memories give me strength. I know how you can kill Myrddin.”

I sat up and paid attention at that. After what he’d done to Mab, I wanted to kill him three times over—a triple death for real this time.

“Myrddin is not immortal. We know that.”

“But he might as well be, the way he can zip in and out of the demon plane.”

“There is no ‘might as well be’ when it comes to immortality.” She rubbed the withered flesh of her arm. “Think back to last night, child. How did Myrddin react when you shot him?”

“He shifted to his demon form.”

“Yes. Why did he not simply exit to the demon plane and return, as he did when he fooled Colwyn with the triple death?”

I pictured last night’s scene. I remembered firing, the black blood flowing from the wounds, the demon growing. “Because the bullets were bronze?”

“Precisely. The bronze prevented Myrddin from entering the demon plane in his human form to heal. Before he could slip away into that plane, he had to take on his demon form. Only in that state could he exit to the demon plane and heal his wounds there.”

“Why?”

“I believe it’s because of the way he merged those two forms: demon within the human and human within the demon. It’s made his human form vulnerable to bronze in a way other demi-demons are not.”

I thought about the legend of the triple death. None of those fake deaths—falling, impalement, and drowning—had involved any bronze implements. “So I can use bronze to force Myrddin to change to his demon form . . .”

“And then you can kill the demon, just as you did with Pryce. With his demon half dead, Myrddin will be as mortal as any human.”