Darklands (20 page)

When he’d made his point, Kane treated the room to another of his million-dollar smiles. “Enjoy yourselves,” he said. “The bar’s open for the next hour. My treat.”

The wolves cheered and crowded the bar. Axel, always up for a challenge, rubbed his thick-knuckled hands together and picked up the pace. This was going to cost Kane a fortune, and all for nothing.

Love.
Why did he have to say “love”? If he’d said it in private, I’d be confused enough. But a public declaration…My brain refused to process what was happening.

Kane surveyed the room with satisfaction. I sat down again, on the same side of the booth where I’d been sitting before. Kane started to take his seat on the opposite side, then sat down next to me. I slid over, but I could feel his heat along the length of his thigh, pressing against mine.

Time to rain on Kane’s parade. Rain, who was I kidding? We’d passed “rain” ten minutes ago. This was more like dropping a nuclear bomb smack on the marching band.

“You’re not drinking your champagne,” he said, pushing my untouched glass in front of me. “Do you want something else?” He turned toward the bar, his hand half-raised to signal Axel.

“No.” I reached over and captured his hand, returning it to the table. I let my hand rest lightly on his. “Kane, I wish you hadn’t done that.”

His gray eyes darkened with concern. “What, the announcement? I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. That wasn’t my intention. It’s a werewolf thing. They’re used to seeing me as a lone wolf. And any new wolf, male or female, gets a hard time the first time it shows up at a retreat. I had to make sure they understand you’re mine.”
You’re mine.
A smile touched his lips as he said the words. “Now, they’ll leave you alone.”

Okay, so maybe “love” was part of some werewolf territorial declaration. I hoped so. It made what I was about to say a little easier.

“No, listen to me. I
really
wish you hadn’t done that.” I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “I can’t go with you.”

He went utterly still, except for a narrowing of his eyes. I don’t think he was even breathing. He didn’t say a word. I hated that. Kane, who’s always full of opinions and comments and theories on every topic under the sun, had absolutely nothing to say.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” I said.

“How could you possibly know what I’m thinking right now?” His lips barely moved as he spoke.

“You’re right, I don’t. But something has happened. Pryce is back.”

He waited for me to continue.

“It, um, started two nights ago, when he sent a Harpy to kill me.”

“Wait. Pryce tried to kill you, and you didn’t even
mention
it to me?”

“I exterminated the Harpy. By the time I saw you, I had other things on my mind.” Things like Simone.

“Other things. I see.” His face was expressionless. “Go on.”

I told him everything I’d learned—the captured demons, the missing cauldron, the door into the Darklands. “The door can be opened at the full moon, and Pryce knows how to open it. Mab and I think he’s trying to reconstruct his shadow demon.”

“And?”

“And—what do you mean ‘and’? I’ve got to stop him.”

“You do? Why? Pryce is wanted by the police for his attack on the Paranormal Appreciation Day concert. You know where
he’ll be tomorrow night. Tip off the police and let them do their job.”

“I can’t turn this over to the cops. Pryce has hundreds of demons packed into that cauldron. If he lets them loose, they’ll massacre the police.”

“So that’s it, then.” His face was a marble statue. “Pryce tried to kill you, and you tell me as an afterthought. You won’t call in the cops. You’re going to go after him alone, knowing he’ll try his damnedest to kill you—and you expect me to be okay with that.”

What could I say? The enmity between demonkind and the Cerddorion stretched back over centuries. That conflict was coming to a head, and I had a role to play. Mab’s hints,
The Book of Utter Darkness
, Pryce’s relentless quest for power, the reemergence of the Old Ones—all of it pointed to the ancient prophecies now being realized. I was part of those prophecies. I would not shirk my destiny.

If Kane had seen that vision—all that destruction, those bodies, that poor, hysterical child—he’d understand. But how could I begin to describe it? It was a vision inside a dream, shown to me by a treacherous book that tried to manipulate whoever read it. Kane would laugh.

“I’m sorry about missing the retreat,” I said. “But I can’t help the timing. The door can only be opened at the full moon.”

“Do you think I give a damn about the retreat? If you never set foot in Princeton, that would be fine with me. But I would like some assurance that you’ll be alive when I get back.” He gripped my hand. Urgency sparked in his eyes. “Vicky, you take everything on your own shoulders, and you don’t have to.
You. Don’t. Have. To.
I’ve fought by your side before, and I’m always ready to do it again. Always. Don’t go alone—wait until I can be with you. Maybe Pryce will fail. But even if he becomes a demi-demon again, so what? We beat him before. We can do it again. You and me. Together, we’re unbeatable.” His face shone with sincerity.

Reluctantly, I shook my head. “I have to stop him, Kane. Now, while he’s weak. If Pryce gets his shadow demon back, he’ll raise a demon army and invade our world. I don’t know if anything could stop him then.”

“Nothing I can say will change your mind, will it?” When I
didn’t answer, the spark in his eyes darkened into something like sadness. He looked away. “Vicky, let me ask you one thing.”

“Go ahead.” I wanted to search his face for a clue about what he was going to say, but he kept it averted. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

When he turned back to me, his expression was wary. “For a long time, I’ve been wanting to take our relationship to the next level. If you don’t…if you don’t share that desire, I need to know.”

“This isn’t about you and me.” God, that sounded harsh. I hadn’t meant for it to sound harsh. I gentled my voice and squeezed his hand. “This is about Pryce.”

“I see.” Slowly, he pulled his hand away. “I wish you’d told me earlier.”

“I—”

“You’ve known since last night, yes? A call would have been nice.”

“I thought it would be better to tell you in person.”

“All right.” He rubbed his cheek and scanned the room again. This time, he didn’t look so pleased as his gaze moved from one table to the next. “And now I’ve managed to humiliate myself in front of half of Boston’s werewolves.”

What do you say when there’s really nothing
to
say? Kane was right; every single word he’d uttered was true. I couldn’t argue with him. I couldn’t soothe him. All I could do was sit there miserably and stare at the table.

“That’s not your fault, Vicky. I shouldn’t have created a spectacle. But I was so…” He made a fist and hit the table. Not hard. There was no bang. The glasses didn’t shudder. But his restrained power and held-back emotion sent a shiver through me.

“I’d better go,” he said. “Tomorrow’s an early day for me. I’ve got some things I need to deal with at the office before we…before
I
leave for Princeton.” He stood. I moved to follow, but he shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, really.” His look said he wished he could feel the same way about me. “I’ll call you when I get back.” And then he turned away. He took a step, then paused and spoke to me over his shoulder. “Be careful.”

With his back straight, he strode across the room. As he passed, werewolves looked up, nostrils twitching. Conversations faded to a murmur, then died out. Without looking back, Kane
pulled open the front door and walked out into the night. All the werewolves who’d watched him leave turned and gaped at me.

Never let a werewolf win a staring contest—I knew that. Still, I looked away.

Voices started up again, at first in hushed tones but soon growing louder. I slumped in the booth. On the table in front of me sat my untouched glass of champagne, fogged with condensation, golden bubbles skittering carelessly up its sides.

ON THE DRIVE TO PURGATORY CHASM, I PUT KANE AND THE werewolf retreat out of my mind. Or tried to. I’d done more than cancel a weekend date. I’d hurt him. It had showed in the set of his shoulders as he left Creature Comforts. I’d hurt him and left him wondering about our relationship. When he asked how I felt about us, I hadn’t even answered; I’d changed the subject to Pryce.

Idiot.

How
did
I feel? When Kane and I first started dating, we kept things casual, and I liked it that way. I was comfortable with him. His career was central; he had big ambitions, and I respected that. For both of us, it was work first, relationship second. And that was fine. It was good, even.

Yeah. Because you don’t want to wonder whether you’re missing out on the important things, whether your sister is the one who made the right choice. So when your boyfriend started to get serious, you didn’t even notice.

“Shut
up
, Butterfly!” I slammed on the brakes and swerved into the breakdown lane. “I swear I’ll make you materialize right here. Killing you now would be worth whatever it costs to clean the car.”

That still, small voice went silent. No extra twinges troubled my stomach. I still felt miserable, but at least the Eidolon had retreated. Good. I didn’t have time to conjure and kill it now, anyway.

Checking the rearview mirror, I pulled onto the highway. As soon as I was back on the road, I was thinking about Kane again.

Why did he want to change things? What did he mean by “take our relationship to the next level”?

I knew perfectly well what he meant. He hadn’t said as much, but Kane was ready to choose a mate.

Bonding with a mate is a big deal among werewolves. It means two wolves have chosen each other as life partners and are ready to start a pack of their own.

I could never be Kane’s mate.

I thought he knew that. I thought he understood that, to me, carrying on my race’s commitment to fighting demons was every bit as important as his own political ambitions.

I thought that was why we had an unspoken agreement never to use the L-word.

If Kane wanted a mate, he didn’t need someone who’d come home at three o’clock in the morning, clothes torn and spattered with dead demon, and put away her weapons before bed. He needed a politician’s wife, someone who’d stand behind him and look pretty in designer dresses while he made speeches. Someone who’d give him lots of werewolf cubs.

Simone Landry would be the perfect mate for Kane. Better than I could ever hope to be.

I hated the thought. But I couldn’t deny the truth of it.

WHEN I REACHED PURGATORY CHASM, I DIDN’T LEAVE MY CAR in the parking lot. The park closes at sunset, and a lone car in the lot late at night might stir the curiosity of a passing cop. I didn’t want any cops jumping out during the little surprise party I’d planned for Pryce.

If Pryce showed up here tonight, I’d kill him. And cops tend to frown on that sort of thing.

Staying on Purgatory Road, I drove through the park and turned onto a side street. A bit farther, and I parked on the grassy verge. Outside it was cold, not quite wintry but not comfortable,
either. I lifted out the duffel bag that held my weapons, then locked up the car. I hoped the Jag would be safe here. I looked up the street, then down. Dead-of-night stillness. Woods bordered the road on both sides. Somewhere in the darkness, peepers were calling. A breeze made the tree branches click against each other like bones. There were no other sounds. I opened my senses to the demon plane. All was quiet there, too. The dim, dirty twilight of Uffern suffused the woods. I heard a distant cackling, probably an echo of someone’s nightmare. No demon sounds came from inside the park.

Butterfly slept inside my gut, heavy, like a stone. The Eidolon was there, but for now it was letting me be. Butterfly was terrified of Pryce—it wanted Pryce stopped almost as much as I did. Being this close to the Devil’s Coffin must spook it.

I pulled back from the demon plane, and ordinary night settled around me again. I waited for my eyes to readjust to the dark. I put on a headlamp but left it unlit. Pryce probably wasn’t here. Butterfly had spoken of the screams of trapped demons, and it was so quiet in the woods that, if I did have the right place, the cauldron must still be cloaked. Tomorrow was the first night of the full moon, but Pryce might deliver another load of demons to the cauldron tonight. If he was here, I didn’t want to give myself away with a light. Of course, depending on how Pryce entered the park, he might see the Jag, which might as well be a neon sign flashing
Vicky’s here! Vicky’s here!
But there wasn’t much I could do about that.

I hoisted my duffel bag over my shoulder and set off down the road toward a trail I’d explored in the afternoon. It was drizzling a little, and the air felt clammy on my face. Tendrils of fog, ghostly in the dark, rose from the damp ground. I paused and removed a black, waterproof jacket from my duffel bag. I put it on, pulling up the hood. Juliet might be bored, I thought, but at least she was warm and dry. Sighing, I continued along the road.

The trail I wanted didn’t descend into the chasm but skirted it widely, meandering through the woods in a big, lopsided loop around the gorge. I found the path and followed it for a while, until I judged I was getting close to the Devil’s Coffin. At that point, I turned north and cut through the woods. The rain had dampened the ground, and I moved quietly over the soft earth. There was mud, but it didn’t suck at my boots like the stuff on the gorge’s floor. After a few minutes I could see the chasm
ahead. I prowled along its edge until I spotted the Devil’s Coffin below me, in the opposite wall.

Crouching, I watched. Fog rose along the bottom of the gorge, but not enough to obscure my view. Rain dripped from branches. A night bird cried. There was no sign of Pryce. No sign of the cauldron in the human or the demon plane.

The night wasn’t over yet, of course. Near the chasm’s edge, I chose a bush that would provide some cover. No leaves—the buds had barely begun to swell—but the branches grew thickly enough that someone scanning the rim from below would be unlikely to see me. Lying on my stomach right at the edge, though, I’d have a good view of the Devil’s Coffin.