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I SAT ON A DOUBLE BED, MY BACK PROPPED UP BY PILLOWS and my legs stretched out. The hard, lumpy mattress was uncomfortable, but it beat my previous resting place in Myrddin’s guest room. I felt weak and tired, and every cell in my body ached. Mab sat in a chair beside the bed, holding my hand in both of hers. Kane lay on the bed beside me, his long wolf body pressed close against my leg. My hand rested on his shoulder, fingers burrowing into his warm fur. We were in a run-down motel somewhere north of the airport.
I was a little fuzzy on how we’d arrived here. I’d been too weak to walk—an attempt to stand up had made me faint. Flashes of scenes jumbled together in my mind. Being carried past white cinder-block walls and up a long staircase. Passing through a doorway into cool air that smelled of exhaust and wet cement. Darkness. Some kind of construction site. Mab buckling a seatbelt across me as she settled me into a car. Leather seats. I thought it was Kane’s BMW, but I don’t know who drove. Not Kane, who was lying across the backseat. I didn’t think Mab knew how—Jenkins did duty as her chauffeur in Wales—but I sure as hell hadn’t been in the driver’s seat. As soon as the car door had closed, I’d slumped against it, dozing off and on as we moved through the streets of Boston.
Now, I smoothed the thin, stiff comforter over my legs. It was the cheapest kind, a hideous orange-and-brown floral print, pocked by cigarette burns.
“Are you still cold?” Mab asked, leaning forward.
“Not as much. ” I’d stopped shivering, at least. Mab pulled the comforter off the other bed and draped it around my shoulders. I probably looked like a pile of dead leaves.
“Warmth will return as your life force regenerates. ”
“That will happen?”
“It’s happening already. I just thank all the heavens we reached you in time. ”
“How? How did you reach me at all? Where was I?”
“You were being held in an underground facility beneath a construction site. Stanhope was the name of the street, I believe. ”
I stared at her. It still seemed unreal that she was here. “But you were in Wales, right, when I called you on the dream phone?”
“Yes. I was trying to bring you there through your dream, remember? I thought the best strategy was to remove you physically from Myrddin’s grasp. ”
“I didn’t make it through the collective unconscious. A form almost absorbed me. ” I rubbed at my arm where the blob had touched me. “I woke up to get away from it. ”
“I was afraid something like that would happen. So I made a contingency plan. Always—”
“—have a contingency plan,” I chimed in. She’d only told me that a million times over the years. We both smiled.
“As soon as you woke up,” she said, “I could feel you’d left the dream realms. If you couldn’t make your way to me, I’d come to you. That was the contingency plan. ”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Jenkins called Mr. Kane—”
“Wait. You put in a phone at Maenllyd?” For my whole life, my aunt had refused to modernize her old stone manor house: no phone, no TV, no Internet. I always felt kind of lucky she’d allowed plumbing and central heating.
“At my house? No, of course not. Jenkins drove me to the pub. He went inside and called Mr. Kane, letting him know you were in danger and asking him to stand by. When he came back out to let me know he’d made the call, I attempted to contact your sister through her dreams. ”
Okay, if I hadn’t been hallucinating before, I definitely was now. “You talked to Gwen on the dream phone?” That was even more remarkable than Mab’s sudden appearance in Boston. Kind of on a par with an ice storm in hell or pigs taking to the skies.
“No, I did not. She wouldn’t respond. I brought up her colors again and again. I tinged them with urgency. She ignored me. ”
“It’s been years since Gwen used the dream phone. Maybe she’s forgotten how. ”
Mab’s brow creased in a frown. “There is no forgetting. Although she gave up her shapeshifting ability, she’s still Cerddorion. She could have answered had she chosen to. So . . . ” Mab paused, watching my face. “I contacted Maria. ”
“Wait, Maria? On the dream phone?” I didn’t think my niece even knew what that was. The dream phone was part of the fun side of being Cerddorion—not the sort of information Gwen would volunteer.
“She’s an impressive child. Brave and kind. She’ll make a fine Cerddorion woman when she comes of age. ”
So Mab believed Maria was on her way to becoming a shapeshifter. Gwen would have a fit—right after she finished having a fit about the fact that Mab had contacted Maria behind her back.
“The child answered at once,” Mab continued. “As I said, impressive. Apparently no one had ever explained our method of communication to her. ” She cocked an eyebrow at me.
I raised both hands. “Not my job, Mab. I can’t interfere with how my sister raises her kids. ”
“Hm. We shall discuss that later. At any rate, Maria caught on quickly, and she allowed me to enter her dreamscape. I asked her to think of a place she knew in Boston, a place she could picture clearly. She chose the aquarium. While she imagined the spot, I roused myself enough to tell Jenkins the location. He communicated it to Mr. Kane. When I returned to Maria, she’d done a magnificent job of building a replica of the New England Aquarium in her dreamscape. I crossed through the collective unconscious and into Maria’s dreamscape. ” Crossed through. Somehow it didn’t surprise me in the least that Mab had made it through that awful place as easily as strolling down a Welsh lane. “From there, I stepped into the aquarium’s courtyard, but not before I took a moment to erase the dream-phone call from Maria’s mind. ”
Good. Maria was having a hard enough time lately. I didn’t want her to be traumatized by yet more dreams she couldn’t understand.
“At the aquarium,” Mab continued, “Mr. Kane was waiting for me. ”
Kane shifted position to put his head on my leg and stared at me. Even though I came from a long line of shapeshifters, it felt strange to see those familiar eyes peering from an animal face. I stroked his head.
“Okay, so you got to Boston the same way I tried to get to Wales. But how did you find me once you were here?”
“This. ” She pulled a pendant from inside her shirt, just as she had in our dream-phone call. It was the same one she’d worn then. “My bloodstone. I always know where it is. So you see, I couldn’t simply call Mr. Kane and tell him where you were, but I could follow the pull of the bloodstone myself. It led us straight to you. ”
“You got it back. ” The last time I’d seen the bloodstone, it was in Myrddin’s hand.
“Yes, Myrddin dropped it during the fight. ” She tucked the pendant away again. “But to tell the events as they happened: When we reached the construction site, we had little trouble getting inside. Mr. Kane had come prepared to fight the Old Ones. He brought a pistol loaded with silver bullets. ”
Kane? With a gun? I’d seen him with it, but somehow that still felt like a hallucination. I looked at the wolf who lay beside me. His intelligent eyes seemed to perceive my surprise. “I didn’t know he could shoot. And how did he load it with silver bullets?”
Kane sat up and held out his right paw. The pads were blackened with silver burns.
I looked at him, surprised. “You can understand me?”
The wolf nodded.
That was odd. When I changed shape, the animal brain took over almost entirely. I could sometimes hold on to shreds of thought or glimmers of ideas, but I couldn’t understand speech any better than whatever animal I’d become. I’d assumed werewolves worked the same way.
“Is that normal?”
The wolf shook his head.
“It’s not a normal transformation,” Mab said. “When Myrddin hit him with energy, the blast was intended to kill. Myrddin was more surprised than anyone, I
think, when it forced a transformation instead. He obviously hadn’t realized your young man was a werewolf. ”
I was glad Kane could understand what we were saying; it felt more like Kane—my Kane—was really present. But it must be killing him not to be able to talk. Kane without a voice was like . . . well, like nothing I’d ever experienced. Unthinkable. I stroked his head as he settled again beside me.
Mab explained what had happened when they stormed the Old Ones’ hideout. They’d been attacked first by vampires and then by Old Ones. Kane’s silver bullets had incapacitated the vampires, and a well-aimed heart shot had killed one of the Old Ones. After seeing one of their colleagues fall, the other Old Ones scattered.
“This vulnerability of the Old Ones to silver shows how weak they’ve grown,” Mab said. “A century ago, silver would hardly have troubled them. Now, it burns and kills them. No wonder they’ve brought Myrddin back. ”
“Back from where?” I asked. “He said something about that. He also said his time was limited to ten days. ”
“Did he?” Mab looked thoughtful. But she didn’t answer my question. She went back to describing the night’s events.
Kane had found the room first. He shot Myrddin twice, hitting an arm and grazing the side of his head, but silver isn’t lethal to demi-demons. Kane ran to me, but Myrddin blasted him with energy and he fell. By this time Mab had arrived. She and Myrddin fought, trading blasts of energy, the wizard slowed a bit by his bullet wounds. Even though the shots didn’t kill him, they still would’ve hurt like hell. Then Colwyn, leader of the Old Ones, appeared in the doorway, with reinforcements behind him.
“I believe he thought Mr. Kane was dead and he was in no danger from the silver,” Mab said. “Instead, a huge wolf leapt up and charged them. ” She gave a tiny smile. “The Old Ones are terrified of wolves—that’s why there are no wolves in Britain to this day. ” A chuckle rolled past the smile. “I’d wager old Colwyn hasn’t moved that fast since Stonehenge was new. ”