Darklands (25 page)

There was that other thing he’d said.
The woman I love.
My feelings tangled themselves into an impossible jumble, twisting my heart a million different ways. Had he meant it, or was he merely making a speech for the occasion? I wasn’t sure. But one thing was certain. The Kane who’d spoken those words had been a man, talking about a woman. The wolf now lying outside—that was a creature I didn’t know.

Weeks ago, when magic had forced Kane into his wolf form, I’d looked into the wolf’s eyes and seen Kane.
My
Kane, the man I knew. But the pure wolf that came out in the full moon was…something else. Something other, alien, unknown. What would I see if I looked into its eyes? The question scared me.

That was why he’d asked me to come with him on retreat. He wasn’t trying to make me into some half-baked, phony werewolf. He wasn’t trying to force me into a commitment I wasn’t ready for. He wanted me to understand him—
all
of him, not just the part that walked around on two legs, wore tailored suits, and won court cases. He wanted me to understand his beast on its own terms.

I thought I knew Kane so well. But there was this huge part of him, this essential part of him, that I didn’t know at all.

I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I STAYED THERE, SITTING ON THE floor, with Kane inches away yet so far out of reach. But I couldn’t stay there all night. Eventually I got up and headed for the bedroom.

On my way, I stepped up onto the chair and again looked out the window. Simone was gone. Had she left the clearing—or was she snuggled up against Kane as he guarded my door? Maybe they’d gone off into the woods together to—

Stop it, Vicky.

I didn’t know. And that was the problem. I
couldn’t
know. I had no understanding of Kane’s wolf.

I went through the motions of getting ready for bed. I showered off the mud and found a sweatshirt and pants that more or less fit. I brushed my teeth. The medicine cabinet held a packet of over-the-counter sleeping pills. I took one; maybe it would knock Butterfly out and I could sleep, too.

The whole time, I wondered what Kane was doing, reaching out with my senses as though I could somehow feel him that way. I couldn’t. I felt foolish to even imagine that maybe I could.

*   *   *

AN HOUR LATER, I LAY IN THE HARD, NARROW BED, GUILT gnawing at me. Everything I’d done lately felt like one great big bundle of wrong.
Work, damn you,
I willed the sleeping pill. I tried to follow Tina’s advice and find a happy thought, something that made me feel good, but every time I reached for one, I grabbed a disaster instead.

I hadn’t stopped Pryce. I hadn’t even come close. He’d succeeded in smuggling his cauldron of demons into the Darklands, and then he’d followed it there. For all I knew, he might already have his shadow demon back.

Forget Pryce for now,
I told myself.
You can strategize with Mab by dream phone as soon as you’re asleep. Mab always knows what to do.

But how could I forget Pryce when my failure tonight brought the world one step closer to the horrible vision I’d seen?

I didn’t bother telling Butterfly to shut up. The thought came from me. Butterfly didn’t have to say a word; it could just chomp on the feelings I brought upon myself.

I turned on my side and tried to think of something else. Kane. I’d really screwed things up there. I’d hurt him and left him confused about our relationship, yet he’d still chased the others away from my cabin and guarded the door. But who knew what that meant? Probably that he’d announced I was his responsibility and felt duty-bound to follow through. Kane was big on duty.

And then there was Simone.

All right, so thinking about Kane wasn’t helping me relax, either. I rolled onto my back again, searching for something more pleasant to think about.

Family day.
Oh, shit. The thought bolted in out of nowhere. Or maybe Butterfly wanted a different flavor to its food.

I was going to miss spending Monday with Gwen’s family. And I’d promised Maria I’d be there. To an eleven-year-old, a promise is a promise, even without pinky-swearing. Now I was stuck here for a week with no way to contact her. The police were keeping this whole fiasco under wraps; they’d never acknowledge they knew where I was. Kane might give Gwen a call when he got back from retreat, but he didn’t know about family day. Plus,
he might be cautious about spreading the word that I was in quarantine until he understood what was going on. And that circled everything right back to the police stonewalling.

I still had the dream phone. I’d get in touch with Maria that way—if I ever managed to fall asleep. But would my reasons even matter? My niece was counting on me, and I’d made a promise I couldn’t keep. I could see her face, a scowl line between her brows, her eyes accusing. She’d hang up on me before I could explain. She’d tell Gwen I couldn’t be bothered, and then Gwen would be furious, too. And Mom—she wouldn’t be furious, but she wouldn’t be surprised, either. More expected behavior from the daughter who never called.

These were not happy thoughts.

The hell with thinking; I needed to sleep. Sleep was my only possible refuge. But how can you sleep when your mind won’t quit chewing over thoughts of everything you’ve ever screwed up, while a guilt-demon chews over your guts?

A guilt-demon I couldn’t kill because the cops had taken away my weapons.

I made a halfhearted attempt to picture Butterfly in frilly pink underwear, but the image didn’t gel. The steady gnawing inside continued without so much as a hiccup.

I got up and swallowed another pill.

Back in bed, I tried to empty my mind. If my thoughts knotted me up with guilt and remorse, I wouldn’t think about anything at all. Eyes closed, I imagined my thoughts as soap bubbles. When a thought arose in my mind, I constructed a bubble around it, then gently batted the bubble away. I concentrated on the swirling, iridescent surface of each bubble, refusing to consider what was inside. Not thoughts, just soap bubbles. Colorful soap bubbles drifting on a soft breeze.

I tried to keep things light and easy. Then a thought about Kane arose, an image of his disappointed face, his eyes dark with hurt. I surrounded the image with color, shaping the thought into a bubble, a pretty, glimmering bubble. But when I went to bat the bubble away, I hit it a little too hard, and it popped.

“Pop me like a soap bubble, will you? Isn’t that what you said—you’d conjure my ass and pop me like a soap bubble? Well, pop this, sweetheart.” Eidolon laughter ricocheted around my mind, scattering and exploding all my carefully constructed soap
bubbles. Each time a bubble burst, the guilty thought or regret it masked broadcast itself into my mind, like stadium-sized amplifiers cranked to full volume.

Kane. Pryce. Maria. Gwen. Mom. Dad. Messed up. Broke your promise. Hurt. Betrayed. Failed.
The words muddled themselves together in a thick gray fog of self-accusation.
How could you? What were you thinking? Why did you? Why didn’t you?
I covered my ears against the babble. Why hadn’t McFarren left me one measly bronze dagger?

I squinted through the fog, trying to see the Eidolon that had generated it. It was the only way to reduce the tormenting demon back to something I could handle, back to Butterfly. If I could see the Eidolon, I could confront it. I could talk back to it, belittle it, cut it down to size. Through the fog I was able to make out a silhouette, but it was shaped like a person, not a giant maggot. Then I realized this wasn’t gray fog; it was silver mist, shot through with streaks of blue. The silhouette was Mab. She was calling me on the dream phone.

I concentrated on the figure of my aunt, and Mab came into focus. She was in the library at Maenllyd, pacing in front of the fireplace, arms folded tight over her stomach.

“I’m asleep?” Okay, so I was asking for the obvious answer to a dumb question; I wouldn’t have gotten the call if I were awake. But I didn’t remember falling asleep. It must have happened at some point when I was batting soap bubbles around.

“At last!” Mab stopped pacing and clasped her hands behind her back. “I’ve been trying for hours to contact you. How are you, child? What happened tonight? Did you stop Pryce?”

My shoulders sagged. “No. I failed.” I looked down at my feet. I hated to see disapproval on my aunt’s face. She was counting on me, and I’d failed her. Remorse flooded me as my eyes filled with tears. Still, I had to face her.

Feeling sick at heart, I forced myself to look up. Mab was frowning. The sick feeling spread; I knew she’d blame me for screwing up. Mab had high standards, and she never forgave failure.

As I opened my mouth to explain, my aunt pulled out a gun.

“Mab, what—?”

She took aim at my stomach and pulled the trigger.

The
bang!
of the report, the impact, the pain—everything happened all at once. I staggered backward, clutching my stomach.

Grim-faced, Mab assessed the hit, holding the gun ready to fire again.

“Mab! You…you shot me!”

“No, child, I did not.” She dropped her arm, pointing the gun at the floor. “Look and see.”

I couldn’t, not at first. Eyes closed, I gingerly probed my stomach and abdomen. It had hurt like hell when the bullet hit, but now there was no pain, no ragged flesh. No hot, sticky blood flowed over my fingers.

I looked. My body was intact, but at my feet lay a puddle of goo. As soon as I saw it, I smelled the stink of sulfur and brimstone. In the center of the puddle, melting like a block of ice on a hot summer day, lay the remains of a large maggot. Relief surged through me as I realized that the gnawing feeling in my gut was gone.

“You killed Butterfly?”

Mab blinked twice. “Pardon?”

“The Eidolon that’s been bothering me. I call it Butterfly to annoy it.” At my feet, the last vestiges of maggot body disappeared into the puddle. “I mean, I did.”

“Ah, control through ridicule.” She nodded. “No, child, I didn’t kill your Eidolon. I killed a Drude that had taken on its shape here in your dreams.” Mab rubbed at a spot on the pistol’s barrel, then lay the gun on the fireplace mantel. “I assume the Eidolon didn’t return to the demon plane after you allowed it to live. It’s obviously still on your mind, or else the Drude wouldn’t have known to impersonate it.”

“You’re right.” I was still rubbing my belly as though feeling for a wound. I let my hand drop. “I gave it a chance, but it won’t leave me alone. I’ll have to kill it. That’s what I probably should have done in the first place.”

Mab pressed her lips together and didn’t reply.

“I was going to make the Eidolon materialize and kill it tonight,” I added. “But I couldn’t, because the cops confiscated my weapons.”

With intense interest, Mab leaned forward. “The police are involved? Tell me what’s happened, child. Tell me everything since we last spoke.”

I filled her in—not on
everything
, just everything that was relevant. I didn’t mention the mess with Kane. My aunt was my mentor in many ways, but shoot-first-explain-later Mab would
never be my go-to person for relationship advice. I told her about the Harpy attack, the robed figure and disappearing cauldron, and Pryce’s zombie-virus suicide. I described the cops’ descent on the scene. “And that’s how I landed in quarantine,” I finished. “I’m stuck here for a week, assuming they remember to come back and let me out. I’m missing family day with Gwen and her kids on Monday.”

I paused, wondering whether I should ask Mab to contact Gwen. But that wouldn’t work. Bad feelings between Gwen and Mab stretched back twenty years, due to a misunderstanding. Although the tension had eased recently, the two of them still weren’t on speaking terms.

Mab nodded absently. Family day wasn’t the kind of thing she gave much thought to, anyway. She sat in one of the wing chairs that flanked her library’s fireplace. “So Pryce returned the cauldron to the Darklands and then followed it there by infecting himself with the virus.”

“Without a shadow demon, he was as vulnerable to the virus as any human. He’s making sure that, one way or another, he’ll be back in three days.” Not many people would choose life as a zombie. Pryce’s reasoning, I guessed, was that if he didn’t manage to re-create his shadow demon this time, coming back as a zombie would let him try again later. “When the door opened, he yelled, ‘Take me with you,’ but the robed figure ignored him. Pryce was injured, and the door closed before he could crawl to it.”

Mab tapped her chin thoughtfully. “The living may not enter the Darklands without permission from one of its Keepers. And they do not grant permission lightly—that’s why they guard the borders. From what you describe, Pryce clearly wanted to disappear into the Darklands, go there physically as well as spiritually, but his request was denied. So he resorted to more desperate measures; the virus was his back-up plan, so to speak.” Her tapping finger paused. “I suppose he stole it from the Old Ones.”

Mab knew all about the Old Ones and the zombie virus; she’d helped me disrupt their attempt to create a new-and-improved virus to give themselves eternal life. She also knew that their leader, Colwyn, had been captured and Juliet was helping to question him. “Juliet said Colwyn was angry because Pryce had stolen something from them. I’m sure it was the virus.”

“Indeed. He expects to make a shadow demon, bind it to himself, and return to his human body, all before that body reanimates. He plans to come back fully restored as a demi-demon, with all of his previous abilities and strengths. He’s very sure of himself,” she murmured. “Pryce has always been arrogant.”

“If he fails,” I added, “his spirit gets kicked out of the Darklands after three days. He’ll wake up as a zombie, but he won’t have been cremated or buried or anything.” It was against state law to dispose of the body of a suspected plague victim until permanent death was confirmed.

“When Pryce received his father’s life force, he also received Myrddin’s store of magical knowledge. That makes him a powerful wizard. If he fails in this attempt, he’ll have other plans.”

“How long do you think we have?” I asked. “Does Pryce have to stay in the Darklands the full three days—or could he be up and running around right now?” It didn’t matter how secure McFarren thought Pryce’s body was. If he regained his shadow demon, he could enter Uffern, the demon plane, again. He could pop out of custody, travel through Uffern, and pop into my living room. And the most dangerous weapon I had here was a can opener.