Robert leaned on the lever. I had no idea how Christopher knew the combination to the gates of Mishmar, but if we survived, I would find out.
Christopher turned the dials.
The second gate opened.
The vampires were almost on us. They swelled behind us, climbing on top of each other, biting, fighting. If they could run, we’d be dead already, but there were too many of them and they trampled each other.
“Go!” Christopher yelled. “Go!”
We wouldn’t make it. I halted by them and pushed the undead horde back. It was like trying to hold back a train. The writhing mass slowed, but it still kept rolling. Curran stopped by me.
Nasrin ran past us. Thomas and Naeemah followed. Jim and Andrea dashed by. Ghastek, his face a mask of complete concentration, moved back slowly.
The pressure on my mind ground me. I shook. I couldn’t hold them. There were too many. Even if we made it through the gates, the horde would chase us. We couldn’t kill them all.
“Go now, mistress!” Christopher yelled.
In my mind, I saw Aunt B standing in front of the gate. No. Not today. Nobody is sacrificing themselves on my account today. I couldn’t go through that again.
Curran pulled my arm. I pulled back. “I’m not going without them.”
The undead minds blended into a single red fire. My mental defenses broke. I staggered back.
Curran swept me off my feet and ran through the passageway.
“Put me down,” I snarled.
“No.” Curran clamped me tighter. “I’m not losing you.”
The third gate opened ahead of us. Beyond, a wide, snow-covered field stretched. Curran carried me outside, dropped me to my feet, and clamped me to him.
“Robert!” Thomas screamed.
Robert leaned into the doorway. I saw Christopher next to him. The slight blond man smiled, his face mournful. Behind them the vampire wave crested, feet away.
No! No, not again, no, no!
Robert looked over his shoulder at the undead horde, then back at Thomas.
Don’t do it.
“Don’t!” Thomas screamed.
“I love you,” Robert said, and let go of the lever.
The gates crashed into place, blocking the undead avalanche. Thomas howled. It was a scream of pure pain, made of grief and despair.
Not again. Everything I kept inside in the deep dark place I had stuffed it so I could function tore out of me. Aunt B’s sacrifice, Mauro dying, Robert, Christopher, all of it spilled out of me in a torrent of helpless grief and I couldn’t hold it back.
I was still screaming when Curran carried me away from Mishmar into the winter.
• • •
I SAT WRAPPED in a blanket by a fire built in the remains of a crumbled gas station. The roof and most of the walls were gone, but a corner of it still stood and shielded the fire from the wind.
Andrea, Jim, Nasrin, and Naeemah had fallen asleep. Even Ghastek gave up and passed out, but not before we had found a huge chain to tether his two ancient vampires to a tree. He’d killed the third. It was too taxing to control all of them and he was tired.
Thomas had gone into the night. He wanted to be alone. So did I.
Curran sat next to me. “They knew what they signed up for.”
“They’re dead, because of me.” My voice sounded hollow. “They came on this mission to rescue me and now they’re dead. Christopher wasn’t even in his right mind. He tried to warn me. He was trying to describe Mishmar to me. His voice was shaking. Going back there terrified him out of his mind, but he did it anyway and now he’s been ripped apart by undead. I promised him I would get him out alive. I gave my word. He trusted me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I can’t do this. I save people. Not the other way around.”
“Sometimes it is,” Curran said.
My whole chest hurt, as if someone had removed my insides and replaced them with a clump of icy needles. “I just wonder who’ll be next. Who is Roland going to go after next? Julie? Derek?”
“Don’t do this to yourself,” he said. “It’s a cycle, Kate. We fight for the Pack, they fight for us. We bleed, they bleed. Sometimes people die. Everyone who came with me came of their own free will. They knew where we were going. They all knew there was a good chance that not everybody would make it out. This isn’t the first fight or the last. People will sacrifice themselves for us again, and we’ll do the same. I don’t know how bad the future will be, but I promise you, we’ll deal with it. You and I. Together.”
I curled into a ball under the blankets. He wrapped his arm around me.
The hollow feeling in my stomach wouldn’t go away. My memory served up Robert’s face and then the look on Thomas’s when the gates had slammed shut. It made my chest hurt.
I had gotten out of Mishmar. I had kept Ghastek alive. But Christopher and Robert had traded their lives for ours. I didn’t want that trade.
I couldn’t bear it.
• • •
I CROUCHED ON top of Hugh’s castle, with fire raging all around me. Smoke filled my lungs. Below, Aunt B roared, pinned down by silver chains protruding from the body of a mage. The Iron Dogs shot her, again and again, each arrow puncturing her body. Hibla stepped forward and swung her sword. The metal gleamed in the light of the fire and Aunt B’s head rolled down off her shoulders. It rolled to my feet, looked at me with Christopher’s blue eyes, and said in Robert’s voice, “You have to prepare to sacrifice your friends.”
A foreign presence brushed against my mind. My eyes snapped open.
I raised my head. Curran was holding me. Everyone was asleep, except for Jim, who sat on top of the ruined wall keeping watch. He nodded at me, his eyes catching the light of the flames. A log popped, sending sparks into the cold.
Sleeping was overrated.
There it was again, a gentle nudge of foreign magic. It seemed to emanate from the tree where the vampires sat tethered. I reached toward it. The two vampiric minds glowed weakly. Behind them in the field a third undead mind waited, motionless. Now what?
I slipped out of Curran’s arms. He opened his eyes.
“I’ll be back,” I told him. “Bathroom.”
I rose and walked off toward the tree, the snow crunching under my feet. The sky was moonless, but the snow made the night seem lighter. Both vampires sat very still. They’d been straining at their chains after Ghastek fell asleep, but now they didn’t move a muscle. Something wasn’t right.
I passed the vampires. Their eyes were dull, a sure indication that someone held their minds in a steel grip. It wasn’t Ghastek—he was out like a light. The third undead mind was right in front of me, in the field, about two hundred yards downwind.
I walked past the bloodsuckers and leaned on the other side of the tree. Whoever held the third vampire probably held these two, and I wasn’t going into that field alone.
“What do you want?” I whispered.
“Your friends are alive,” a quiet male voice said.
Hope fluttered through me. I caught it and choked it to death. He was lying. Nobody could’ve escaped that horde. The sheer number of undead had been too much for anyone to hold back, except possibly my father.
“There is an undead directly south of you in the field,” the quiet male voice said. “I’m about to let him go. Please take hold of it.”
The third vampire’s mind flared and I clamped down on it with my magic.
“I’m waiting for you two miles south. We can speak there in some privacy.”
I pushed the vampire south. It ran through the snow, the feedback from its mind overlaying mine, as if I were watching what it saw on a translucent screen. Another minute or two and Curran would come looking for me. I walked back to Jim.
“I can’t sleep. Let me take the watch.”
Jim peered at me. “You sure?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m going to sit on that log and think things through.” I pointed to a log about a hundred yards out. If I kept my voice
down, they wouldn’t hear me.
“Want me to come with you?” Curran asked.
“No. I’d like some alone time.”
He opened his mouth and closed it. “As you wish.”
I love you, too.
I went and sat on the log. Jim lay down. Curran was lying down too, but I was pretty sure he was watching me. If we had traded places, I’d be watching him.
I sat quietly with my back to Curran as my vampire dashed across the snow. It cleared the open field, then the brush, the strip of woods . . . I glanced back at the camp. Curran was lying on his back. Awake. He usually turned on his side to sleep unless I was lying next to him, my head resting on his chest.
The woods ended. The vampire shot into the open onto the crest of a gently rising hill. A man stood there wrapped in a scarlet-red cloak, frayed and torn at the edges. His long dark hair fell loose around his face. Tall forehead, high sculpted cheekbones, strong square chin, dark eyes, handsome and fit, judging by the way he stood. A Native American, not young, but ageless in the same way Hugh was ageless, stuck forever somewhere around thirty.
The man inclined his head. “Sharrim.”
It was an Akkadian word. It meant “of the king.” My voice came out of the vampire’s mouth effortlessly. “Don’t call me that.”
“As you wish.”
I almost told him not to say that either, but the explanation would take too long.
“Look below,” the man invited.
I brought the vampire to the edge of the hill. Below me the ground rolled down to another field. Vampires filled it. They sat in neat rows, held in formation by navigators’ minds. There had to be upward of two hundred and probably at least half as many navigators. Too many for me. Holding back the undead horde had given me some perspective. If I grabbed all of the undead in that valley, I could possibly hold them long enough for the rest of our party to make a run for it, but my control over them would be measured in seconds.
“My name is Landon Nez,” the man standing next to me said. “I serve your father.”
Right to the point. Apparently, I could stop pretending not to be related to Roland.
“Hugh d’Ambray is the preceptor of the Order of Iron Dogs. I’m the Legatus of the Golden Legion. Do you know what that means?”
It meant we were all in deep trouble. I knew exactly zip about Landon Nez. The Legati didn’t last long, because Roland was demanding and didn’t tolerate mistakes. The last Legatus my adoptive father had known, Melissa Rand, died about two years after Voron did. “It means you’re in charge of the Masters of the Dead, you answer directly to Roland, and your life expectancy is rather short.”
“In a manner of speaking. Your father chooses the People’s policies and I implement them. I’m the brain to d’Ambray’s brawn.”
“Did Hugh survive?”
“Yes.”
How . . . ?
“Does that distress you?” Landon asked.
“No, I’m just wondering what it is I have to do to kill him.”
Landon raised his eyebrows an eighth of an inch. “I’ve often wondered the same thing. I’m positive that if I set him on fire and spread the ashes into the wind, he wouldn’t regenerate.”
“Have you tried it?”
“Not yet. But I’ve imagined doing it many times.”
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Not even a little bit. “What do you want?”
“Hugh had his shot. He failed. It’s my turn. I’ve been authorized to offer you this.”
He held up a photograph. On it, Christopher and Robert sat next to each other at a table. Robert’s smart eyes were blank. Wet tracks marked Christopher’s face, and his eyes were red. He had wept. He was back in the hands of the man who’d broken his mind. I would walk on crushed glass barefoot to get him out and my father knew it. Now, he was using it against me.
“They are unhurt,” Landon said. “His offer is as follows: if you can walk into Jester Park, take them by the hand, and walk them out, all three of you will be granted safe passage out of his territory. You must come alone. Whether you succeed or fail, the people who are waiting for you by the fire will be permitted to return to Atlanta unmolested.”
“And if I refuse?”
Landon turned to the vampires. “He wants to see you. If you choose to ignore his invitation, the two men will die and I will unleash what you see here on your camp. He has no doubt that you will survive the massacre. Perhaps the werelion may survive as well. The rest won’t be so lucky. The choice is yours.”
The werelion would not survive. We both knew it.
Robert’s words came back to me. But now they know you have a weakness and they will use it against you. They will take someone you love and threaten to kill them, because they know you won’t pass up that bait. I know it, they know it, and now you must understand it. You have to prepare to sacrifice your friends.
I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in me. I couldn’t sacrifice the people who had risked everything to keep me breathing. I couldn’t let Curran or anyone else by that fire die here in this nameless field.
I looked at the Golden Legion waiting below. It was only a small fraction of what Roland could bring out, and I knew my father wouldn’t stop. He would keep culling my friends one by one, until I stood alone. Everyone I cared about had become a target. I’d known it would happen. Voron had warned me about this. He had taught me that friends made you vulnerable. I ignored his warning. I started it all with my eyes open and chose to let people into my life, knowing I would have to one day face the consequences. Now it was my responsibility to keep them safe.
It had to end. I had to end it now. I had to face my father.
If I did this on Roland’s terms, Curran and I would be over. I had promised Curran that when the time came, we would face Roland together. He loved me, but if I told him that he had to sit on his hands while I went to my death, he would leave me. He would forgive me almost anything else, but not that. But if we went there together, it would be double suicide.
“How did Hugh and my people survive?” I asked.
“Your father was watching. He held the undead and my people went down to retrieve the two men and the preceptor.”
If he wasn’t lying, it meant my father stopped that entire undead mob with a single effort of his will. The scope of that power was staggering. Curran and I wouldn’t get out alive.
“Tell me why I should trust you.”
“A fair question.” Landon tilted his head. “If your father simply wanted to capture or kill you, he could’ve done it a number of times. That is one of the reasons d’Ambray is out of favor. Teleportation is too unpredictable for anything but escape from certain death. He took an unnecessary risk with his life and with yours. The relevant question is why d’Ambray did it. Why imprison you inside Mishmar when he could’ve simply teleported you to Jester Park or dragged you there in handcuffs? The instruction given to d’Ambray was exactly the same as the one given to me.”
“And that is?”
“Persuade you to come to Jester Park of your own free will.”
“Why?”
“Your father has his reasons. He chose not to share them with me. But you should know that when he gives his word, he doesn’t lie.”
I laughed under my breath. Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.
“Yes or no?” Landon asked quietly.
If I went, Curran would try to come with me and we both would probably die. If I told Curran no, we would be over and I would probably die. If I told Landon no, everybody would die. No good choices.
It was my turn to make sure the person I loved made it out of Mishmar alive. I could just sneak out in the middle of the night. Or lock Curran in a blood ward as soon as the magic wave came. Even if he broke through the ward, it would take the wind out of his sails and he couldn’t follow me.
Except I loved him. After our last fight, he promised me he would always be honest with me. I had promised him the same thing, and now I
had to play by the rules.
“I’ll tell you in the morning.”
“I need an answer,” Landon said.
I stared at him. He didn’t look fazed.
It took me a full ten seconds to realize he couldn’t see my psycho stare through the vampire’s eyes. Nice going there, champ. “You’ll get your answer in the morning. If you did your homework, you know that I think logic and restraint are overrated. If you push me, I’ll get my people and see how many of this famed Golden Legion I can kill.”
“You’ll lose,” Landon said.
“Yes, but I’ll have a great time and take a hell of a lot of you with me. In the past few days, I’ve been threatened, teleported, drowned, starved, and locked in a cage while being forced to watch as people I care about died. I have so much rage in me, I’m having trouble keeping it inside. If you push me, you have my word that I’ll make it my personal mission to find you in the melee and slice your head from your body. I’d enjoy it. It would be fun for me. If you somehow manage to survive, you’ll have to go back to my father and explain how you had me in your grasp, but you were too clumsy and you failed, just like Hugh, and now a lot of vampires and I are dead. Somehow I doubt he would accept my head as a consolation prize. You’ll have my answer in the morning.”
I let go of the vampire’s mind, got up, and moved over to the fire. Curran still lay on his back.
“I know you’re awake.” I lay down next to him.
He opened his gray eyes and looked at me. I loved him so much, it hurt. I loved everything about him. The way his eyes lightened when he laughed. The way they shone with little gold sparks when he wanted me. The way his thick eyebrows came together when he was pissed off. I loved his nose that never healed right. I loved the stubble on his cheeks and the hard line of his jaw. I loved that he called me on my bullshit. I laughed at his jokes and I loved that he laughed at mine. I loved that no matter where I was he would come for me. That he would always be there, helping me cut my way through the mess that was life.
I leaned over to him and kissed him. I kissed him, trying to tell him all of the things I couldn’t put into words. I tried to tell him that I loved him, that he meant everything to me, and that I would fight for him. Nobody would take him away from me, because if they tried, I would carve a path right through them. He kissed me back, and tasting him was heaven. He was right here, alive, warm, and mine—but only until tomorrow. I held on to him. I’d just gotten him back. I couldn’t lose him. Not now.