“And you never told me this?” he exploded. “How many times did you see it?”
“I threw a flashlight through it. I thought it wasn’t real.”
“How can I keep you alive if you don’t tell me everything?” he snapped.
“How can you expect me to tell you everything when you never tell me anything? I don’t know the first thing about you!”
“I’m the one that keeps saving your life. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Yes, but why? Because you need me. Because you want to use me.”
“For what other reason would you have me save you? Because I like you? Better to be useful than liked. Like is an emotion. Emotions”—he raised a hand, made a fist, clenched it tightly—“are like holding water. You open your hand, there’s nothing there. Better to be a weapon than a woman.”
Right now I was both. And I wanted Mallucé. “You can chew my petunia later. I’ve got an earful for you, too.”
We found the spear in a velvet-lined box, near his laptop. I wondered how a laptop could possibly be working down here, until I realized all the lights on it were that strange blue-black shade of cold light the amulet had given off. Mallucé was powering it with black magic.
“Wait.” Barrons punched in a few commands, brought up the screen. A page of text was visible for a split second before icy sparks erupted from the computer and it went dead.
“Did you catch any of that?”
“He had multiple bidders on the spear. I saw two of the names.” He glanced at his watch again. “Get the spear and let’s move.”
I reached for the spear, nestled in velvet, and was just about to remove it from the box when I drew up short, struck by a sudden terrible thought.
I snapped the lid shut. When I picked up the box and tucked it beneath my arm, Barrons gave me a strange look. I shrugged and we moved on.
We left the boudoir, and entered another cavern, crammed with books and boxes and jars with contents that defied description. From the look of things, Mallucé had been dabbling in black magic since long before he’d met the Lord Master. There were boyhood treasures scattered among the vampire’s collection of potions, powders, and brews. I could almost see the young British child, invisible in the shadow of his prominent, powerful father, hating it. Rebelling. Becoming fascinated with the Goth world, so different from his. Studying black magic. Planning his parents’ murder at twenty-four. Mallucé had been a monster long before he’d rechristened himself.
The storage cavern opened into a long, wide tunnel lit by torches. There was a steel door in the wall. It was locked. Neither Barrons nor I could kick it in. He placed both palms against it. After a long moment, he said, “Ah,” and muttered a swift string of unintelligible words. The door swung open, revealing a long, narrow cave that looked to be a quarter of a mile long. It contained cell after cell of Unseelie. Here was Mallucé’s personal larder. I wondered how he’d trapped them all.
Suddenly I sensed him, a maelstrom of decay and fury, gusting down the tunnels toward us.
“He’s coming this way,” I told Barrons. “I think he needs food. He said he has to eat constantly.”
Barrons gave me a sharp look.
I knew exactly what he was thinking. “Not because it’s addictive,” I defended, “but because parts of him had turned Fae from eating Unseelie and the spear poisoned those parts.”
Barrons stared at me. “Parts of him had turned Fae? And the spear poisoned him? And you knew this before you ate Unseelie?”
“Bear in mind the alternative, Barrons.”
“That’s why you left the spear in the box and tucked it beneath your arm. You’re afraid to carry it now, aren’t you?”
“Before, I had a weapon. Now I am a weapon.” I turned and stalked from the cavern, not about to reveal how deeply it disturbed me that I might have gained the power of a Fae—and the weakness of one. I never wanted to touch the spear again. If I accidentally pricked myself, would I, too, begin to rot? What had I become? Kin to my enemy in how many ways? “He’s on the way,” I tossed over my shoulder. “I’d rather he didn’t eat again.”
Barrons stepped through behind me and closed the door. He slipped a vial from his pocket and I realized he’d been pilfering some of the vampire’s things. He splashed a few drops on the door and spoke again in that language I didn’t understand. He glanced around, and I could tell he didn’t like what he saw. “A good soldier chooses the terrain of his battle. You’ve shared the same flesh with him. If you can sense him, I’ll bet he can sense you. He’ll follow.”
“What are we looking for?”
“A place with no way out. I want this over with fast.”
The cavern we chose was small, narrow, and spiked with stalactites and stalagmites. There was a single entrance that Barrons planned to bar once Mallucé had entered. I handed him the box with the spear. He gestured for me to conceal it behind a fall of rubble. There was no way I was giving Mallucé the opportunity to use the weapon against me. Besides, I’d already established that it only killed parts of him, and parts weren’t enough. I wanted all of him dead.
“How do I kill a vampire?” I asked Barrons.
“Hope he’s not.”
“I really don’t like that answer.”
He shrugged. “It’s the only one I have to offer, Ms. Lane.”
I could feel Mallucé approaching. Barrons was right, somehow the meal we’d shared had linked us. I had no doubt he could sense me as clearly as I could him.
The vampire was incensed…and hungry. He’d been unable to enter his larder. Whatever Barrons had done had successfully sealed the entrance. I told you my inscrutable host has a bottomless bag of tricks. I’m really beginning to wonder where he gets them.
He was near. My body hummed with anticipation.
Mallucé stepped into the opening. His hood was down and his smile was beyond gruesome. “You’re still no match for me, bitch.”
He was framed in the doorway, backlit by torchlight, his dark robes rustling, and I could smell the emotions wafting from his rotted flesh. He smelled as fearless as I felt. He believed what he’d just said. I would prove him wrong. I narrowed my eyes, assessing him. He might think himself my superior, but my escape bothered him and he wasn’t going to step into the cavern until he knew how I’d managed it.