Bone Walker (21 page)

“Oh, I absolutely know you're here, my bardling, I felt it the instant you arrived. Be an obedient boy and bring our guest to me, won't you?” The voice paused, just long enough to allow a tinge of dark promise to thread through its words. “Be swift. You know I do not like to be kept waiting.”

The smoke wreathed out around Elessir, transfixing him where he stood. I shrieked, which didn't help, for unnatural peace stole over his features nonetheless.

Then he reached for me, and when his hands connected with my arm and shoulder to pull me to him, wine-sweet warmth sluiced through me. It radiated out from the places he touched, turning me light-headed, and then flowing down to loosen my knees.

Thrall
, I thought in one last burst of panic, before that vanished in the growing compulsion to twine my arms around the Unseelie bard. I'd done it before, hadn't it? Back at the mall? He'd been smaller then, shaped differently, but no, that wasn't important now. All I needed to remember from the mall was where my arms belonged. I wrapped them around his waist. And I pressed closer to him, aware now of nothing except that intoxicating warmth and his mouth drifting down to mine.

“Kiss me, darlin',” he murmured. A tiny part of me noted that his drawl was strangely distant, strangely rote, but no, that didn't matter now either.

I kissed him, warmth blooming through me, molding me against him.

Then he picked me up and carried me off.

Even at his most powerful, Elessir had never been able to fight off Luciriel. No one among the Unseelie could. The Queen didn't suffer rivals in her presence or in her Court. In living memory only Melorite had come close, and her death had been what drove him at last to seek the aid of the Court's own blood enemies. That—and the vision his Sight had given him one night in Mississippi when he'd faced down a mortal woman who'd been brave enough to confront him in her bar. She hadn't had the fortitude to stand against the thrall of his singing, but his Sight had warned him that her granddaughter would.

He had nothing whatsoever to defend against Luciriel's vast magic now, and he didn't even have time to try before it overwhelmed him completely. Everything vanished from his awareness save for the smell of the girl, that mortal woman's granddaughter, dazzling in her youth and strength.

And her beauty
, Luciriel's voice suggested in a delicate whisper that wreathed his mind in a ring of smoke. Elessir couldn't argue with that, and didn't want to. Not when he saw Miss Thompson's eyes go bright with need, and not when her arms locked around him in a circle of warmth and power. He sought her mouth with his, and for a moment there was nothing in his existence but the heat of that contact.

Then the echo of it redoubled through him, augmented by sparkling filaments of frost—a net that closed around his thoughts and resounded with Luciriel's approval.

Does she not taste sweet, my bardling? Would you like to taste her again?

He did. He'd hidden it from Miss Thompson, but from the seeking consciousness of his Queen, there was no hiding.

No, there's not. I have all your secrets, and I'll have all of hers, too. If you're a good boy, perhaps I'll even let you keep her. Now bring her to me.

Some last lingering shred of his consciousness rebelled despite the futility of it, for that part of him still remembered that if Luciriel could promise him Miss Thompson, it meant she'd captured them both. But his body had yielded, even if that last part of his mind had not, and his limbs were all too willing to bear the girl's pliant form where the Queen wished it to go.

And all he could do, in the blasted hole Melorite had left in the core of him, was scream.

“Jesus God! Kenna! KENNA!”

Christopher heard his own terrified shout, but in truth had no real idea of his own words. They didn't matter, not when color and power exploded around Kendis, ripping open a hole in the air—and not when the creature wearing a young child's body hurled a missile of force straight at the girl he loved. He threw forth power of his own to block it. But he had no time to aim while he was already hurling himself in Kendis' direction, bent on shielding her with body and magic alike. Millicent's power crested along with his, and his Warder First had all the speed of her decades of experience. But it wasn't enough.

Elessir beat him to Kendis, tackling her, and he wasn't fast enough either.

The
alokhiu
's assault slammed into her, hurling her—and the Unseelie along with her—through the open portal. When Christopher's own leap carried him to that spot, though, the portal closed with an audible rush of power. Light coruscated across his sight, blinding him for an instant, and his aborted tackle had nowhere to carry him but straight into the ground.

“KENNA!”

Feet thudded near him. Hands grabbed at him, hands whose owners Christopher couldn't see until his sight cleared and he realized Jake and Carson were pulling him to his feet. He shoved away their hands, for neither man's presence was as important as the one he suddenly lacked.

Oh God, sweet Christ, where'd she go!

Laughter, too high and sweet of tone for the menace it carried, sliced into his rising panic—laughter, and the sharp bark of Millicent's order. “Boy, get your head back in the game!”

Christopher whirled, prodded by the older Warder's rebuke and by that uncanny laughter. There was the bone walker, the small form she'd claimed still glowing, still floating inches off the earth. She grinned at them all with blatant and ancient malice, seemingly unaware that the
nogitsune
Hiroshi was leaping for her—until she spun in mid-air and hurled a miniature blast of lightning straight into his face. Hiroshi yelped and collapsed, blurring into human form, until at last he looked with anguished eyes up at the thing that inhabited his sister.

“That's not very nice,
oniisan
,” she chided. “If you do that again I won't love you anymore!”

“What'd you do to Kendis?” Christopher roared. “Where'd you send her?” He was ready to charge her like the
nogitsune
boy had. But Millicent was hanging back, despite the crackle of her power through the earth and air, and even Makiko Asakura was doing no more than warily circling, looking for her own opportunity to strike.

“Oh, come on, pretty Warder boy, where do you think I sent your Seelie girl? Just like my Queen commanded. And now that that's done, I can
play
. Play with me!”

With a rumble of thunder, her magic redoubled. Christopher whipped his shields into place barely in time to keep a second blast of lightning from blowing him off his feet—and even then, he staggered back hard, his sight filled with golden spangles of fire once again.

“Jake, get Carson back!” Millicent bellowed. “Melisanda, back off, you're not fighting her with a sword!”

“Lady Warder, do you plan to fight her with a gun?”

Christopher shook his head to clear it, in time to see the Seelie warrior herding Jake and Carson away from him, further down the path. She cast him a questioning glance, but he waved her off and eyed his Warder First instead.

Millie stood with feet planted wide and her shotgun poised and ready. She scowled down the length of it, straight at the hovering child. But Makiko rushed to her, shoving at the weapon with her right hand. At the same time, Christopher felt the power the
nogitsune
had hurled at him and Kendis roil round the other woman, charged with her anger and fear. Makiko bit out words in crisp Japanese, and then again in English: “You will not shoot my daughter's body!”

Frustration clouded Millicent's expression, yet for a single moment she didn't argue. That brief hesitation was enough for the bone walker to strike again. Magic blasted into the earth before them all, driving them back several feet and calling up wind that tore into clothes, hair and eyes.

“We have to get her out of the kid, Millie!” How they'd do that, Christopher didn't know. He'd grown up a Warder's son, and two months running now he'd wielded Warder power of his own. But he'd never even seen a dragon child, much less had to banish a ghost out of one. Saeko, whether because of the entity possessing her or no, didn't answer to the magic as one of Seattle's people. God help him, he had no idea if they'd be able to break the
alokhiu
out of her at all.

Nor did Millicent have time to instruct him. She pulled back her gun, but her power rose in its stead, answering the crackling wind from Saeko's outstretched hands with the full roaring strength of her own. Christopher could do nothing except dig down along with her into the deep blazing sea of energy that Seattle offered them, and throw her a line of his magic to back her up. It was reflex by now. He'd done it often enough with Kendis.

Panic threatened to choke him at the thought of her. He tamped it down hard and focused instead on flinging Millicent every ounce of power he could muster.

It didn't help.

Millie was as staunch and immutable as Signal Hill on the island where he'd been born, or as Mount Rainier towering over the city he now protected. But if the older Warder had the strength of the Rock itself, then the next eruption of power from the bone walker matched her with all the ferocity of the storms that blew into the St. John's harbor every winter. The air grew harsh and chill, and in the heart of the gusting wind, the body of Saeko Asakura began to change.

Makiko screamed—but Millie, unrelenting, thundered to Christopher, “Get her out of this city, boy! NOW!”

The
nogitsune
Ryuji Asakura had resisted when Christopher had flung him beyond Seattle's Wards. Next to the thing that inhabited his sister, though, he might as well have ambled out with a song and a smile. In Saeko's voice the bone walker shrieked, turning her full attention now upon the Warders. Magic plowed into Christopher, force and light and heat that made him think for an instant that he'd just been set on fire. But his channel to the city held—and, more importantly, his channel to Millicent. He didn't have enough power or experience to banish this creature by himself.

Millicent, however, did.

Her power, tapping deep into his own, hit him almost as hard as the
alokhiu
's strike. Gritting his teeth, digging his heels into the earth, he held onto his consciousness and focused on throwing everything he had out to aid his Warder First. Under Millie's command, their joined magics reared back. Then they struck, straight into the center of the rapidly growing shape of Saeko Asakura.

Through the haze of power brightening the night, Christopher caught one glimpse of Saeko's small body rapidly gaining height and breadth and the beginnings of wings.

In the next instant, she was gone.

Voices cried out all around him. Not until his vision cleared, though, was he really able to tell that the sudden fight was over. Dazed, Christopher took note of the others. Melisanda, Jake and Carson had all backed off as Millicent had ordered. The Seelie, though, still had her blade drawn. Jake, despite his partner outweighing him, stood planted between Carson and any threat that might come their direction. Makiko had rushed to the side of her son, and though neither spoke, fear was plain in both their expressions as they embraced.

And Millicent was turning to him. Her cheeks were gray with weariness, which might have alarmed Christopher if he hadn't noticed how she was looking at him first. Grim and furious was nothing new on the face of Millicent Merriweather. That look of unhappy understanding as she tromped up to him and seized his shoulders, though, sank a knife right into his chest.

She knows
, he thought numbly.
She knows Kendis is gone
.

Only then did his legs begin to wobble. He might have fallen save for the iron grip the old woman had on him, keeping him on his feet. “We're going to find her, son,” she murmured to him. It was the same voice Christopher had heard her use to comfort Jude, and he almost wanted to cry himself at the sound of it. “She's going to come back to us. Just remember, I need you, Seattle needs you, and
Kendis
needs you to hold it together so we can make damn sure she does make it back. Can you do that?”

Mary, Mother of God, he wasn't sure he could. But Christopher swallowed hard and then nodded once, slowly. “I can,” he said.

His voice was the barest croak, barely audible even to him, but it satisfied Millicent. She nodded once in curt approval, and beckoned him to follow her to the others.

“Good. Then hang onto your hat, boy, because I'm here to tell you, we're in for a long goddamn night.”

They all regrouped at Kendis' house, for though nobody wanted to break the news to Aggie, even less did they want to keep it from her. The very idea made Christopher ill. Yet he couldn't stand the thought of meeting Aggie's eyes to try to explain what the hell had just happened, and so, when Kendis' aunt met them at the door as they trudged in, he hung back and left the unhappy duty to Millicent. He did catch a glimpse of Aggie's face going bleak, as if all the hope had been sucked out of her—and that, too, made him sick at heart.

Makiko's other son Ryuji met them at the house once Millie cleared him to cross back over Seattle's Wards. He proved to be younger than his brother, barely out of his teens, with halting English at best. Jake saw to patching up his partner. Then he saw to all three of the
nogitsune
, offering tea and sake and what other refreshments he and Carson could provide, as well as conversation in soft Japanese. While Christopher didn't have a word of it—he'd barely muddled through his French classes in school, never mind any other language—the worry in their voices was plain. It was the same worry shared by them all.

Makiko, however, soon enough spoke up.

“There are others of our people in and near Seattle,” she said. “Jake Tanaka knows of this. My sons and I will warn them. And we will patrol past the edges of the city where you Warders cannot go.”