Min's Vampire (27 page)

The shotgun had worked with hellfire
and silver. It had been built by her grandfather to hunt
lycanthropes, and utilized a sliver of dragon’s tongue as its power
source. To have blasted off the ogre’s head like that she must have
added iron to the mix.

Quite effective.

Luca’s mouth twitched, and even though
he was in mortal agony, he was smiling. If he could breathe he’d be
laughing about then. The ribs that were crushed started to push
back out and heal, as were the holes those broken ribs had torn in
his lungs. Even for a vampire like himself that was unheard of
healing. Ten times as fast as usual. But just the sight of his
violently beautiful Min filled him with a hellish jolt of fiery
strength. It was their connection—whatever it was inside her that
had sparked and lit whatever now burned inside him.

He pulled himself to his feet and
picked up the fallen sword. His first breath was torture, but it
felt good to do it, even if technically he didn’t need
to.

“
You have great timing,” he
wheezed, the taste of his own blood thick on his tongue.

Min raised an elegant eyebrow at him,
her curvaceous lips a pleased smile. “Nobody lays a hand on my
boyfriend…or a foot.”

Their eyes locked and for a long beat
there was nothing but utter silence. And then one of the remaining
goblins let out an inhuman cry and lunged for Min. She shut him up
by blowing his misshapen, scaly, lop-eared head off his bony
shoulders. With that the fight was on, and the remaining wild fae
fought with bloodthirsty abandon. But between bursts of iron-laced
hellfire, Luca’s slicing sword and Katarina’s ruthless precision
with that double headed axe of hers, there was nothing but chunks
of their enemies left a few moments later.

Luca looked up and saw Madge, the
waitress, and what must have been the waffle slinging cook, Henry,
peering out the oval Plexiglas peep holes in the twin swinging
doors that led back to the kitchen area. A moment later they were
gone. Most probably out the back exit.

Min met his eyes again, and he felt
that sudden rush again, as if her mere presence was what animated
his every fiber. It was love. It couldn’t be anything else. Love
and whatever ethereal, metaphysical connection they now
had.

Then Katarina gasped and said, “Where
is Andy?”

Min’s eyes jerked away from his and she
blinked hard. He could see her inwardly berating herself for not
noticing sooner.

“
That faerie bitch opened a
portal in the wall,” he pointed and his shoulder popped back into
place with a nasty, thumping crunch. “And she dragged Andy in with
her. Looked like some sort of winter wonder hell. All darkness and
snow.” He paused as he remembered something strange in the pitch
black of the shadowy backdrop he’d seen. “I think I saw a huge
mountain in the background. It was blacker than the
night.”

Katarina choked back a mournful cry and
fell down to her knees. Min turned and knelt beside her, wrapping
the arm not holding the Bellini in it around her mother’s
shoulders. “What is it? Where has she taken her?”

“
To Winter’s Keep. It’s her
seat of power in Faerie.” The older woman’s strength seemed to
crumble as she fell against her daughter. “Our only hope was to
keep the fight on this mortal plane. If she’s already crossed over,
and into her own kingdom, we haven’t a chance of saving Andy.” Her
eyes, the same chocolate brown as her daughter’s, gleamed with
impending tears. “We’ve failed…” She shook and her expression
melted into anguish. “She’s gone…she’s really gone.”

~*~

Min couldn’t breathe. Kneeling there on
the tiled floor of the diner, her mother in her arms, she couldn’t
believe what her mother was telling her. “What do you mean? We’re
not going to just give up and let that bitch have her!”

Katarina’s mournful cries only became
more strident. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see? We can’t fight Sliva
at her power center.” She pulled Min down to look into her eyes.
“We wouldn’t have a prayer even if she was just in Faerie. But at
her stronghold nothing would have a chance…nothing…”

The bottom of Min’s stomach dropped
out. Her mind and her lungs both locked up on her. No thought
passed through her mind, and no air passed through her lips. She
felt a pressure building in her chest, and was sure she’d throw up
any second. She gulped and forced herself to take a
breath.

This can’t be
true…

Luca, blood covered and still limping,
stood at her side and put his hand on her shoulder. His mere touch
seemed to push back the rising panic inside her. It helped clear
her head as well.

“
It isn’t true,” he said, as
if to answer the question she’d only voiced in her mind.

Min looked up and his eyes burned with
green light. Not the vampire fire she’d seen before, but with
actual light, a ghostly glow. She gasped and shuddered, but could
not look away.

“
Before you came Andy told
me the Summer Queen came here and talked to her.”

“
Arianna?” Katarina
sputtered.

Luca nodded. “The Queen told Andy that
only she could destroy the Winter Queen. That that was her true
purpose.”

Min slowly stood up, pulling her mother
to her feet. “So…this Summer Queen wanted the other Queen to find
Andy?”

“
Looks like. And it looks as
if the Winter Queen took the bait.”

“
What the devil are you two
talking about?” Katarina demanded. “My daughter is going to die and
you’re talking about faerie tricks!”

“
No,” Luca said, his face
somber, his eyes glowing with intensity. “We’re talking about why
we need to go into Faerie and rescue your daughter. She isn’t going
to die. She’s going to end the Winter Queen.”

Katarina laughed hysterically. “End the
Winter Queen? My daughter is her prisoner. Any moment she’s going
to…” She wobbled where she stood and Min caught hold of her,
steadying her. She pulled herself together and regarded the vampire
once more. “She’s her prisoner. Andy doesn’t have a chance against
her, and neither do we.”

Luca looked to Min. The green light
radiating from his eyes was more than hypnotic; it was full of
power, full of hope. And full of life!

Min gasped as she realized what she was
looking at. Somewhere inside Luca was a piece of Summer, a
thrumming, very alive spark of the faerie magick of
Summer.

“
I know we don’t have a
chance against the faerie Queen or her minions.” Luca said, as he
picked up the cold iron sword he’d dropped in battle. The blade
steamed as faerie blood sizzled down its blade. “But the Queen of
Summer thinks Andy’s going to destroy the Queen of Winter. And I
think…no,
I know
that we need to be there to watch her back. And to get her out
of Faerie safely afterward.”

Katarina stepped closer to Luca, her
eyes suspicious. “How could you know that?”

Min reached out and laid her hand on
her mother’s shoulder. “I believe him, mother. I know it’s crazy.
But it’s what we have to do.” She stepped in front of her mother
and looked her in the eyes. “And even if we’re wrong, we can’t
leave Andy there. We have to try. We have to go.”

Katarina’s breathing was labored and
her eyes frightened and brimming with tears. But before Min’s eyes
Katarina pulled herself together again, the fierce, iron
determination Min was used to seeing in her mother solidified and
she swiped the tears out of her eyes.

“
So, what do we do next?”
she asked.

Min looked to Luca. Every time she even
laid eyes on him her strength built and grew. She returned her gaze
to her mother and smiled. “We rip a freaking hole into Faerie, go
in and take her back.”

Chapter 26

The little diner was utterly silent for
a moment. Katarina’s eyes went from determined to hopeless again
for a beat, but she shook that off. “So how are you going to do
that? Did you specialize in trans-dimensional studies while I was
asleep?”

Min felt her brows knit in on
themselves. “No. But you know a few things about opening
portals…and you were in cahoots with the Summer Queen. Didn’t she
teach you anything?”

“
Sure. She taught me how to
lie to my daughters and to myself. And she helped build up the
wards on our home. But no fae is going to show a mortal, even if
there is fae blood running in their veins, how to cross over into
Faerie.”

“
But I’ve seen you open a
portal to freaking Iceland,” Min said, not believing what was
coming out of her mother’s mouth.

“
That was a doorway to just
another place on the same plane of existence…and it took me three
weeks of prep work and over four hours of spell
casting.”

“
But—”

“
It would possibly take
years of research and weeks of gathering power just to attempt to
open a door into the quaintest, friendliest part of Faerie. But
we’re talking about the Otherealm, and Winter’s Keep as well. I
don’t think there’s a witch on the planet with that kind of
power.”

The steely intent Min had built up
inside her faded away as her nerves started shaking again. She
could plan a raid all she wanted. She could push and push until she
broke, but if there wasn’t a way into where they needed to
go…

“
But let’s say,” Luca said,
leaning against the side of the booth closest to Min,
“hypothetically. If a witch powerful enough to open such a door was
to try, where might they begin?”

Min shook her head. Dimensional magicks
were not her forte.

She looked to her mother and saw a
glimmer in her eyes. That meant she was onto something.

“
Well,” Katarina said,
“first you’d need to know where you were going. And know where that
part of that world lined up with this one.”

Luca gestured with a wave of his hand
to the open space between two booths. There was nothing special
about it, just grungy wallpaper and a simple black and white
clock.

“
That’s where the Winter
Queen opened her portal. Maybe that’s where we’d need to open
ours.”

Katarina shook her head. “She could
call up a portal to her home from just about anywhere. The laws of
physics, even of magick, wouldn’t mean much to her, especially when
she’s so connected to a place.”

“
So what else would we
need?” Luca asked, as if he’d already received all the answer he
needed to question number one.

Katarina patted her face with a hand
and scrunched up her eyes. “Well, after that we’d need something
connected to the Otherealm…to the fae in particular. Having
something from there would…”

The instant Katarina’s eyes snapped
open and her expression flashed with excitement, Min felt something
vibrate like a tuning fork in the breast pocket of her coat. The
two women traded glances, and then Min reached into her pocket and
pulled out the short silver dagger she’d found on her mother’s desk
only weeks after she’d fallen into a coma. The dagger that had cut
her. She hadn’t seen it since that day…but here it was, exactly
when she most needed it.

It glinted in the brightly lit diner,
and for a moment she could have sworn she saw the greenest eyes
reflecting out from the blade.

Katarina crossed to her, and Min held
the dagger out. “This is of faerie construct, isn’t it?”

Katarina bit her lower lip and took the
dagger. “Better than that, daughter mine. This was given to me by
Arianna herself. It was forged in the deepest part of Summer.” She
whirled around and held her hands to her mouth. “But that would
only get us to the heart of Summer, presuming we’d gather enough
power to do the job.”

A thought sparked in her mind, and Min
licked her lips. “When I first picked up the dagger, it cut
me.”

Katarina stared at her. “It was only
supposed to call an emissary to help you. It wasn’t supposed to
harm you. Are you sure?”

Min glared at her mother. “I’m quite
sure it cut me when I touched it.”

“
No, I mean, are you
sure
it
cut
you
? Are you certain you
just didn’t cut yourself on it?”

Min thought back to that night. She’d
been careful when she’d handled the blade, and she remembered that
it hummed with a power the moment she picked it up. And then it had
cut her.

“
I’m certain of
it.”

“
Well then, it would seem
the blade took payment in blood for its service, and took part of
you into itself. That’s…interesting.”

Min reached out and took hold of her
mother’s hand. “It’s more than that…it’s a freaking
revelation!”

Her mother looked askance of
her.

Min took a deep breath and pushed back
the excitement that was building inside her. “You said that Arianna
used you and me to shape Andy, right? Like a blueprint. That makes
her connected to us in blood and every other way a family member
would be. And that dagger is connected to Faerie.” She let go of
her mother and strode over to the wall the Winter Queen had used to
escape through. “That means the dagger is connected to both Faerie
and me…” she turned and smiled at her mother. “And that means we
can use it to get to Andy.”