“And don’t come back!” I shouted, shaking as I reinstated the circle. “Or I’ll give you more of the same!”
My skin prickled. I spun back to Al. But the demon wasn’t even looking at me. Relieved, I turned to Ivy, seeing her eyes black and beautiful. “You okay?” I asked her, and she smiled.
“I’ll miss watching you work,” she said, more alive than I’d seen her in two hours.
Pissed, I pulled the hair out of my mouth and glared at Al. “You’re a prick for standing there when I need help, you know that?” I said, then ducked as something flew over my head.
“Rachel!” Bis called, the cat-size gargoyle winging in a tight circle to drop down onto the rock Ivy was slumped against. “Jenks said you were going to walk to the church. Hold on. I’ll be right back. Trent’s at the wrong line.”
Trent? I took an elated breath, but the little guy was gone. The sun had gone down unnoticed, and his pebbly black skin was hard to see against the night. I’d hardly recognized him before he’d vanished.
My knees were shaking, and I turned to find Al was gone. Coward. “You left me!” I shouted. “And I can love anyone I want!” I added, but there was no one there but Ivy to hear me.
“Son of a bastard,” I muttered, hope a quick flash as a figure stepped from nothing in the soft sound of displaced air. There was the quick pulse of leather wings, and Bis was gone again.
“Nina!” I had expected Trent, but it was Nina, the athletic woman in her classy dress suit and black nylons bolting to Ivy with a vampiric quickness despite her high heels.
“You’ve been here for hours!” Nina exclaimed, black eyes angry as she fell to kneel before Ivy and covered her with her jacket. “Why didn’t you give her any blood?”
It hurt when she said it like that. “She doesn’t want any,” I said, my relief overwhelming.
Ivy pushed weakly at Nina, eyes slipping shut. “No. I’m okay. Rachel did what I asked.”
“She doesn’t want blood. Stop forcing her,” I said.
Hunched over Ivy, making her Hispanic elegance into a frightening shadow, Nina all but hissed, “This is what she is. What she wants means nothing when it comes to keeping her alive.”
But if she quit striving for who she wanted to be, Ivy might as well be dead.
I took a breath to tell Nina to back off, startled when Bis jumped back into existence. The little gargoyle was on Trent’s shoulder, and he immediately popped back across the lines, for Jenks, probably.
Thank you, God. Trent shuddered as the stink of burnt amber filled his lungs, and something flip-flopped in me. My eyes darted to where Al had last been to be sure he was gone. Trent was here. I didn’t have to do this alone. He wouldn’t let Ivy die. We’d be in time.
“Rachel.” Trent’s usual slacks and dress shirt looked out of place, sheened with red from the glow in the sky. His dress shoes slipped on the dust, and he caught his balance effortlessly. His pace crossing the dust was fast, and his eyes were quick. Sunset, even in the ever-after, was truly his best time. “Thank God you’re all right. Jenks told me what happened. Is Ivy okay?”
“She’s hurt bad,” I said as he reached me. Nina was trying to get her pearl button undone from a silk cuff, but Ivy wouldn’t let her, insistently promising she was okay. “She’s got internal injuries and a concussion.” I hesitated, surprised at the sudden lump in my throat. “I probably shouldn’t have moved her, but I had to get to a line . . .”
“Why the hell am I always last!” Jenks complained, joining us in a bright flash of pixy dust. His bright sparkle sifted down like a temporary sunbeam over Ivy, making her smile and lift her hand to give him a place to land. She was whispering to Jenks, comforting him when it should have been the other way around.
Bis landed on the rock above them, clearly anxious to start jumping us out. His lion-tufted tail wrapped around his feet, looking both submissive and protective—dangerous even as the white tufts on his ears made him cute.
We had to go—but I nearly lost it when Trent pulled me close, smelling of green things and spice, his touch real and loving, reminding me of everything I wanted but was afraid to call my own. Suddenly I was fighting the urge to cry as fingers strong from pulling in unruly horses and tapping out keyboard commands gentled me closer. I’d had to keep it together, and now there was someone to help. Ivy was going to make it. She’d make it! She had to.
“You did the right thing,” Trent whispered, the deep understanding in his voice bringing my defenses down. I’d never have expected it a year ago, but now . . . after seeing him lose everything to follow his heart, I could. I could accept his comfort, show my vulnerability—even if it might not last. The undeniable truth was, he was meant for better things than me. One day Ellasbeth would have him, and I’d be left with the memory of who he had wanted to be.
“Rachel?”
But I’d be damned if I didn’t take what I could of the time we had. Catching my tears, I wiped my face, giving Trent a thankful smile as I pulled back and looked for Bis. The little gargoyle had his wings draped around him, looking like a devil himself. “Bis? Can you jump her to Trent’s?”
“Not until I give her some blood!” Giving up on her sleeve, Nina used her little teeth to rip the button off. “She can’t be moved yet,” the living vampire said as she pushed her sleeve up. Her naturally dark skin showed the scars even in the dim light, and her panic at finding Ivy this close to death obvious. “I can’t believe you let her sit here on the cold ground!”
“Easy,” Trent said when I stiffened, and he lifted my chin, reading the strain I’d lived with for the last few hours, the fear. “Why is it harder when those we love are in danger than when it’s just us?” he whispered, and I blinked fast. I wasn’t going to cry, damn it. I wasn’t!
“No,” Ivy said again, her eyes black as she found Nina’s. “No,” she said more stridently, and Nina hunched over her, aching with her need to help her.
“Ivy, sweetheart, please. Let me make you stronger so we can move you.”
Bis waited, wings half open, unsure and unwilling to do anything that might hurt Ivy. Trent, though, was grimacing. He knew it for the lie it was as well as I. Oh, I was sure blood would help stabilize her, but it would be an unredeemable step backward, back to where Nina, in all her expensive perfume and trendy clothes, was—back to where Ivy was striving to pull Nina from despite Nina’s assurances that she wasn’t allowing Felix into her mind anymore. The clever woman was too in control most days not to be.
“No.” Ivy’s voice was stronger. “No blood. Not like this. I’d rather die twice.”
“But, Ivy . . . ,” Nina protested, breaking off when Ivy fumbled to pull Nina’s sleeve down and kissed her fingertips. Frustrated, Nina knelt over Ivy. “It doesn’t have to be this hard!” she begged, but Ivy only smiled lovingly, feeling good that she’d resisted, that she’d won again for another day. “Why do you do this to yourself?”
I turned away as Ivy patted Nina’s back, comforting her. In Ivy’s eyes, Nina was the one who needed help.
“Bis. Go. My surgical staff is waiting,” Trent said, and the gargoyle awkwardly hopped from the rock. “We need to get out of here before the surface demons find us.”
“Too late.” My eyes lifted to the surrounding rocks, glad they hadn’t shown themselves yet as they evaluated the threat Nina and Trent might be.
“I thought so.” Trent sighed, turning to watch my back. “I’m sorry about the church.”
“My church? What’s wrong with the church?”
Jenks’s blur of wings shone against Trent’s fair, almost transparent hair, glowing red as it picked up the red ever-after dust. “The pixy-piss vampires have overrun it,” he almost snarled. “Stinking up the place and stomping everything like fairy maggots looking for spiders. They thought you might jump to the line in the garden, and they’ve got enough manpower there to make Piscary puke—if the putrid pus pile of vampire piss were still alive.”
Ivy chuckled, the laugh choking off in a pained sound making Nina’s eyes go black again. Bis carefully reached a clawed foot out to touch her, and when Bis and Ivy winked out of the ever-after, the tight knot around my gut finally began to ease.
Nina hunched over the space Ivy had been in for a moment before rising to lean dejectedly against the rock. Slowly her expression changed as she realized where she was. Tension wound through her, turning her from uneasy to a threatening shadow, smeared red with the remaining light in the sky. When I’d first met Nina, she’d been lively and eager for anything new. Now, after almost a year under a failing master’s warped attention, she was still looking for thrills, but she was also twitchy and unpredictable—her jealousy of any attention I might show Ivy becoming increasingly violent. I didn’t believe for a second that Felix was ignoring her, but every time I brought it up, Ivy got mad, wanting her happy lie rather than the inconvenient truth.
“Word got out you were finding undead souls,” Trent said softly.
“That’s not true!” I exclaimed, but he was nodding as if already knowing it.
“Even so, every undead vampire in the city now believes you can,” he added. “Especially after what happened last July. In their minds, they don’t understand why you haven’t done it.”
No wonder they were camped out at my church. “I don’t think you can tie a soul to a mind when the body is dead,” I said. “That’s why souls leave after the first death.” I was tired, but I didn’t dare relax, and I strained for any clink of rock, any sliding of dust.
“They don’t want to believe that.” Trent cupped my elbow. Tingles spread from there to the small of my back where his other hand had gone to pull me closer to him. “We’ll figure this out. I’m not entirely penniless, you know.”
That he was there to help without my asking was a guilty relief, but I didn’t know how he could. He’d lost almost everything in discrediting the truth of his illegal manufacture of genetic medicines and the very drug that the vampires depended upon for survival. It didn’t sit well that both the vampires and the elves had gone after him because of me, and I bowed my head when I realized I’d done the same thing to Al, bankrupting the demon before he’d had enough and left. I was an albatross, pulling down those who meant the most to me. Maybe I should leave before I brought Trent down, too.
Trent’s arms were around me, but I couldn’t speak, unwilling to breathe in his clean scent and feel the whisper of wild magic that sometimes rose from him like aftershave. But the guilt of him losing almost everything because of me was a sharp, insistent thorn.
“He still cares for you,” Trent said, and I looked up, confused. “Al, I mean. He was here, wasn’t he?”
Oh. That. Grimacing, I turned in Trent’s arms, feeling his grip ease as I looked at Al’s line, knocked off its path by my desperate pull on it. Al’s jealousy wasn’t born of affection, but from a weird kinship and maybe a little envy. I’d stood against the demons to keep who I loved, and Al had worked within the shadows of their hatred for a thousand years for the same reason, ultimately failing. He was bitter. “How can you tell?”
Smiling, Trent tucked a gritty strand of hair behind my ear. “You have that ‘I yelled at someone who deserves it’ look. He’ll come around.”
Sour, I bobbed my head and pulled entirely from him. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Bis jumped back in, and Jenks yelped, taking to the air and dodging the winged gargoyle until the bigger flier snagged him. “I’m going last!” Jenks protested. “I’m going last with Rachel, you overgrown worm!” And then he was gone. It was just me, Nina, and Trent.
The scrape of wood on rock jerked my eyes to a surface demon, its gaunt shadow rising up black against the still-darkening horizon. And the surface demons, I thought, setting up a new protection circle and wondering if it was too late.
Behind me, a rock clinked. Slowly Trent moved to put his back to mine.
Yep, it was.
“Rachel?” The air tingled at the pull Trent drew on the ley line.
“There,” I said, flicking a tiny pop of energy at a swiftly moving shadow. Shit, there were two of them in here. Heart pounding, I turned to the first. “Detrudo!” I shouted, and he pinwheeled back, crashing into the inside of my circle. His staff lay on the dirt, and I ran forward, scooping it up before running back to Trent.
Hissing, the larger surface demon jumped from rock to rock, looking alien as he circled us. Nina was white faced, pressed up against that rock, and I beckoned to her. Scared, she inched closer, but she was moving too slowly, and there was a demon creeping up behind her.
“Nina! Get down!” I shouted, leaping to get between them. Without thought, I pulled on the line, sending it from my chi to my hand, condensing it as it took fewer and fewer pathways until it finally reached my fingertips and ran down the staff. “Dilatare!” I shouted as it exploded from the end, the rod acting like a rifle bore to focus it into a finite point that slammed into the surface demon with a thunderous ache of release.
Nina screamed as she dropped, the burst of light showing surface demons doing cartwheels into the rocks and pebbles. The shock echoed back up my arm, and the staff fell from my senseless fingers. Shaking, I looked at it, wondering what the thing was made of.
And still . . . a hunched shadow found its feet, not giving up as it began to creep forward again, low to the ground and hissing.