Hollows 11 - Ever After (38 page)

“What is it?” I asked, cold but too wary to come back to the fire.

“Half of a set,” he grudgingly said, his eyes down as he snatched it from me, cradling the ring to him as if it were alive. My eyes widened as I realized it was his shackle, his tie to a miserable past. “I want you to see this,” he said. “To know what you risk.”

“I’m sorry,” I said softly as I came forward to sit cross-legged before him again. He was flushed, embarrassed and ashamed to be clearly still tied to it. “Where’s the other half?”

Al smiled a savage, ugly smile. “Gone, along with its owner.”

My eyes fell. I couldn’t look at him.
Al had been a slave?
“Al—”

“I trusted once.”

I couldn’t say anything, huddled cold before his fire in his shrinking room, failing world.

“You’re willing to risk your life,” he said, “but what of your soul? What if the master ring falls to someone else? What then? It’s only the slave ring that can’t be removed by its wearer.”

My eyes fell to Al’s hands, just visible among the folds of the blanket. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and they looked hard and worn. But I had no choice. Miserable and unsure I looked up. “I have to do this.”

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His eyes catching the red glow of the low flames seemed almost normal. “Then why have you failed?”

Oh God. I knew why I’d failed, and I dropped my gaze. “I’m afraid,” I whispered, and he smiled. “Damn it, it’s not funny!” I shouted. “I’m afraid!”

Still smiling, Al looked at my fingers knotted around one another, but he didn’t reach out to touch me. “Do you trust Quen?”

Miserable, I thought of Quen, his morals, his loyalty, his strength of character. Ceri had loved him, and Ray was his entire world. I knew exactly what I would get with Quen, and I nodded. I trusted him.

“Do you trust . . . Trent?” Al said. My head snapped up, and Al bobbed his head at my deer-in-the-headlights expression. “Ahh, there it is,” Al said, infuriatingly smug.

“Trent won’t ever have access to it,” I said quickly.

“Chances are he will. If you trusted him, you could invoke them. Show me what you do to invoke elven . . . silver.”

Flustered, I dug the rings out. “I trust him. I do,” I asserted, but my stomach clenched, telling me I was lying.

Al shrugged his shoulders, and his blanket fell away. “Then show me.”

Fine.
Mood sour, I carefully snuggled the smaller ring into the cradle of the larger. Shifting on the hard flagstones, I perched the rings on the tips of the fingers of my left hand, holding it right at eye level between us. One last look at Al, who had fumblingly put on a pair of glasses I could only assume would let him see my aura easier, and I closed my eyes.

God, please help me do this,
I thought.
I need to do this.

Exhaling, I pushed the aura off my hand, feeling it hang about my bent elbow like a shirtsleeve, warm and soft. Al grunted in surprise when I made an odd twist in my head, and my entire aura flashed red. “You layer your aura?” he breathed. “One vibration at a time?”

Nervous, I wondered if showing Al this was such a good idea. The demon was a packrat. No telling what defunct charms he had lying around. But I nodded, not opening my eyes as I sent a tendril of red aura to snake up my arm. I shivered as it skated over my pulse points and crawled up my fingers, twining over the joined rings and thickening. My pulse hammered. This was where it usually all fell apart, and I carefully, slowly, shifted my aura twining about me and the rings to the slightest shade of orange.

“Careful . . .” Al breathed, and my head started to hurt as tiny cracks in the rings showed.

“I can do this,” I said through my clenched teeth. I had to do this. I had no choice.

But it was Trent, and I felt tears of frustration prick my eyes and my hand start to shake. He had caged me, hunted me, and made my life hell, even as I had fought to shove down his throat that he was immoral and deserved punishment.

But my breath came out in a sob as I realized I didn’t believe that anymore.

I remembered his agonized expression in the ever-after basilica when he begged me to see his people to health, his anger when he pulled Nick off me, his willing sacrifice to endure death and the end of everything he had worked his entire life for—to save one child.

“Rachel,” Al whispered, but the tinkle of wild magic plinked through my soul as one whirling eye of a thousand turned and focused on me. Others were drawn, and my courage faltered as they laughed at me for thinking I had any power but the power of choice.

And at that, my conviction grew. Choice. Damn it, I trusted Trent. Damn it all to hell, I trusted him down to my soul—not because I had to, but because I chose to.

Tears rolled down my face, and I shook at the realization. I trusted him, even with my soul.
And he isn’t meant for me.

The wild magic laughed, and it was as if the eyes marked me with the blackness of the night, making me theirs.
I am yours,
I agreed miserably, but it was true, and more important, it was my choice. It always had been.

I shook as the entire rainbow skated over my skin, flashing to a blinding white that sank inside itself to an impenetrable blackness. With an echoing
ping,
the rings reinvoked.

Gasping, I opened my eyes wide to see the rings glowing like glory itself. With a sudden implosion of thought, the making of the rings imprinted on my mind. The degradation that the rings in my shaking hand had once caused echoed through me, the cruelty of the master, the anguish of the slave, the petty bitterness and the savage backlash that ended both lives and broke the rings. It was all there, in the tinkling laughter of wild magic, savagely honest in its cruelty. Lives had been ruined beyond belief with the power contained here, and now it was mine in two tiny bands of hard metal.

“Rachel.”

I couldn’t look away from the rings. I could feel tears on my cheeks and sense Al—a dark bear of a shadow—hovering before me, his hands outstretched, afraid to touch me.

“Rachel?” It was questioning this time, and I blinked, curving my fingers around the warm metal. They were alive. All I wanted to do was destroy them.

“These are evil,” I said, choking back a sob as my aura thickened, pinpricks of energy welling up through me in protection—protection against stuff such as what I had made. And I would trust Trent with this? “These are evil!” I said louder, seeing them through my tears.

My arms hurt, and I jumped as a blanket smelling of Al and burnt amber landed around my shoulders. “You did it,” Al said in wonder, and I looked up, shaking. “You trust him?”

“I wish I hadn’t.” Sniffing, I wiped a hand under my nose. “No wonder you hate elves.”

I went to hide them, and Al caught my wrist. Slowly my fingers opened, and he took them, his expression solemn as he held the rings up to the firelight. His glasses were gone, and he held them close, squinting. “How sure are you of his commitment?” he asked, his tone guarded and soft.

I wiped my eyes and held my shaking hand out. The memories of the rings still echoed in me, still coloring my thoughts as I tried to readjust my world. I’d known elves were savage, fighting for their existence under the boot of the demons. I had guessed that the demons were seeking revenge for the elves cursing them into a slow spiral of extinction. But I hadn’t realized how deep it went, how convoluted it was, how old.

Shaking the feeling off, I took the rings from him and jammed them away in a pocket, hiding them. I’d use them, and then when done, I’d destroy them. They were tools, and I wouldn’t let fear rule me. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, answering him. “It’s the choice I make.”

Al sighed and looked into the flames, through them, maybe, at nothing and everything. “Perhaps you should concentrate on saving yourself,” he whispered. “Let us all die. We’re broken beyond repair.”

I thought of Al in his dream, looking nothing like this, more like an elegant bat. Broken? Perhaps, but I had put his butterfly back together with my blood. “I never liked the movie
Titanic,
” I said, and he grunted, his gaze sharpening on me. “They both could have gotten on that damn door.”

Al smiled, and a weird, kindred sensation filled me. Standing, I took his wedding rings from the mantel and handed them to him. “Don’t try to forget her,” I said, and his hands closed on them, wonder in his eyes as he looked up at me.

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes, I do.” I had to leave. The rings were awake, and the sooner I used them, the sooner I could destroy them. “Could you . . . send me home?”

He blinked, then got to his feet with a huge sigh. “My student just reinvoked wild magic, and she can’t get herself home?” He laughed, but it fell flat, and I jumped, startled when his thick finger touched my jaw, turning me to make me look at him. “If he betrays you, I will finish what I started with his fingers,” he said, and I shivered. “Tell him that.”

“I will.”

The smooth finish of my scrying mirror slid into my arms, and he backed up, eyes running over me as if it might be the last time he’d ever see me. “We are such cowards,” he said softly, and then my breath sucked in as the line took me, my head exploding in pain. I think I passed out, because I didn’t remember hitting the hard red cement slab that covered Pierce’s grave in my backyard, but that’s where Al dropped me.

Sitting up, I rubbed my bruised hip, looking past the silent gargoyles perched around me as I pulled my scrying mirror to me. “Ah, hi,” I said as I got up, nervous and stinking of burnt amber. Leathery wings rustled, and red and gold eyes blinked. “I hope I didn’t disturb you,” I said as I edged onto holy ground, my hands touching the outside of my pockets to be sure I still had everything. I had reinvoked wild magic. Somehow I had done it. I had everything in place.

Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I
could feel gargoyle eyes on me as I began picking my way back to the church, taking the shortest path but giving their hulking shadows as much space as I could. The sun had gone down while I’d been in the ever-after, and I wondered if I had time to take a quick shower to get the stink of burnt amber off me before I started in on some charms. I wasn’t sure what would be the most helpful, seeing as Ku’Sox could take anything I could dish out and throw it back to me with four times the power.

“Don’t let me down, Trent,” I muttered, feeling as vulnerable as new skin. Damn it, why did I have to trust him? My life was a lot easier to understand when I didn’t.

Behind me, the gargoyles rumbled like elephants, and I ducked when a shadow arrowed over my head. It was a gargoyle, my first wild hope that it was Bis dying as she did a flip to lose her momentum and land atop a grave marker facing me. I knew she was female because her eyes were yellow and the tuft of fur at the tip of her tail was black instead of white. She was more slender than Bis, too, and had a definite grace to her motions as she resettled her wings.

“I thought you were Bis,” I said, trying to cover my surprise.

“I’m Glissando,” the young gargoyle said, her ears almost flat to her skull and her higher but gravelly voice rumbling. “Bis’s friend.”

Uneasy, I flicked my gaze behind her to the church, the glow from the uncurtained windows spilling out into the garden. “I’m sorry,” I said as my attention returned to her. “A demon—”

“Took him, yes,” Glissando interrupted me, the slant to her golden eyes becoming angry. “His father would like to talk to you.”

“He’s out there?” I said, voice squeaking, and then I mentally kicked myself. Of course he was out there. Every gargoyle in Cincinnati was in my backyard.

“I’ll take you to him,” Glissando said, and my pulse pounded. Damn it, how was I going to explain this to him? Why I had put Bis in such danger?

“I should’ve tried to get ahold of Bis’s dad right when it happened,” I muttered, and Glissando ruffled her wings in agreement. I slowly turned, wondering which one of the pairs of watching eyes belonged to Bis’s dad. What was I going to say to him? Did he know that I was a demon? That Bis was bonded to me? Bis had said he had talked to his dad just last week, but “Hey, Dad! I’m bonded to a demon!” isn’t the kind of thing that came up in casual conversation.

Glissando’s ears swiveled, catching the sound of Jenks’s wings before I did. The irate pixy dripped a weird mix of blue-and-green glowing dust as he arrowed across the damp graveyard. “Oh God, you stink worse than six-week-old pepper piss, Rache,” he said as he hovered before me, eyeing Glissando suspiciously. “Everything okay?”

I nodded, my hand touching my pocket where the slave rings sat. I was going to trust Trent with my life. I was an idiot. “I need to talk to Bis’s dad,” I said, and the pixy’s dust flashed a surprised gold.

“Ah, you don’t mind if I come along,” Jenks said, daring her to protest.

But the cat-size gargoyle lifted her wings and shrugged.

Muttering half-heard comments about the back of an outhouse, Jenks snuggled in behind my hair just under my ear. It was too cold for him to be out here, but I wasn’t going to insult him by saying so.

We turned back to the waiting gargoyles, and I flinched. It was one thing to tell yourself that the kid you took in is playing with demons to learn the lines, but another to tell his dad.

“You sure you don’t want Ivy?” Jenks asked as Glissando flew past us to land on the next tombstone and blink at us impatiently. “She’s bigger than me.”

“You saw her sharpening her knives,” I said as I picked my way back the same way I came out. “You want
that
out here in the dark with
this
?”

There had to be over two dozen pairs of red or yellow eyes turned our way, glowing in the twilight. Glissando shifted nervously as I passed her, hopping to a marker only a few feet ahead. “Can I talk to you?” she asked, and I hesitated, surprised.

“Sure.”

With a small jump, the gargoyle landed on my other shoulder, startling me and making Jenks swear. I braced myself, but there was no echo of the lines in my mind. Bis had bonded with me. His images were the only ones that could reach me now.

“I was hoping Bis would be my life mate,” she said, and Jenks made a pained whine.

“Sorry,” I said as I followed her pointing finger and shifted my path through the long, wet grass. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” she said, interrupting me. “I simply wanted you to know that I’ve known him all his life. And now they’re calling him the world breaker. The one we’ve been waiting for, who will set the lines ringing to a new song or destroy us completely.”

My eyebrows rose.
World breaker?
The gargoyles that I’d seen when I’d popped in had all turned, and with a sinking feeling, I realized that’s where we were headed.
Can I make a good first impression or what?
“Glissando . . .” I started, but heavy claws pinched my shoulder, bringing me to silence.

“He’s always been just my friend,” she said, her voice gruff and yet feminine. “Now?” She hesitated, snuffing. “I mean, can the goyle who spends half his waking moments trying to spit on a bird in flight really be the one who’s supposed to change everything?” she finished plaintively, making Jenks snicker. “He’s a person, not the savior they all think he is. The stupid half-flat is so noisy he can’t catch a pigeon off wing.”

Savior?
I thought, confused. They thought Bis was something out of their collective foretelling? How come this was the first I was hearing about this? “I’m, ah, trying to get him back.”

“Back?” She snorted, and Jenks yelled at her when her tail whipped around my neck for support. “He’s learning the line,” she said sarcastically. “He can’t do anything from here.”

She really cared for him, and guilt tightened around me. Damn it, I’d really messed up his life, and now he was in real danger. “Glissando, I really like Bis. He’s important to me because he’s a member of my family, not because of an old wives’ tale. We’re going to fix that line. I won’t let him down.”

The small gargoyle took a deep breath. “Thanks,” she said, her head down. “I’ll tell them you’re coming. That’s them, right over there.”

She spread her wings behind my head, and I stiffened. “Wait. If they are calling Bis the world breaker, what are they calling me?”

Her tail slipped from around my neck, and her weight shifted. “You’re his sword to break it with.”

I blinked and gaped after her as she effortlessly took to the air.

“Holy crap!” Jenks exclaimed. “I’ve been taking rent from the gargoyles’ savior?”

I swallowed hard, glumly forcing myself to keep moving forward. “And his sword,” I said, thinking it was a lot to put on the kid. “What does that make you?”

“It makes me the landlord!” he said in satisfaction. “Hurry up, will you? It’s cold.”

Unable to see the humor in it, I inched onto the small patch of unsanctified ground, marked by a red slab of cement and Pierce’s grave. Six large gargoyles, male and female, lurked on the surrounding stones, their wings draped over their backs. Behind them, dozens lurked, watching as well. A huge gargoyle was perched on the angel statue, his claws leaving delicate scratches on the angel’s face like tears.

Nervous, I scuffed my feet, and his big red eyes narrowed at me. It was obvious they didn’t like being this close to the ground, but it put them nearer to the one line in Cincinnati that was humming instead of screaming. “Uh, hi,” I said, pulling one hand out of my jeans pocket to give him a little wave, and the rest of them shifted their wings in a leathery hush.
I have two of the world’s most powerful rings in my pocket, and I’m in danger of being squished.
“Ah, you must be Bis’s father.”

“I’m Etude,” the gargoyle on the statue said, his vowels grinding together low and deep in his throat. He shifted his claws, and a flake of stone broke from the statue, hitting the cement to shatter. His ears flattening for a second, he flushed a deep black. Suddenly I felt more relaxed, having seen Bis do the same thing when embarrassed.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I never liked that statue much. This is Jenks.”

Jenks made a burst of dust but stayed on my shoulder. “I’m here to make sure none of you hulks hurt Rachel,” he said loudly, and the gargoyles around us murmured, sounding like a distant avalanche. “I’m just warning you, is all,” he finished, and I lifted my shoulder to get him to shut up.

“Ah, about me losing Bis in the ever-after—”

“Bis?” the old gargoyle said, and I sighed at the interruption. “Yes. Ah. Can I talk to you?”

“Sure . . .” Confused, I stuffed my hands back in my pockets, not knowing what was going on anymore. This wasn’t what I had expected.

“There seems to be some confusion,” Etude said, gesturing to the gargoyles surrounding us. “Everyone seems to think Bis is going to do this great thing. But this is my son we’re talking about. We all know the mistakes he’s made, the errors he sings.”

The gargoyles watching nodded, their eyes showing impatience. Not liking their attitude, I cocked a hip. “He’s saved my life more than once.”

“All I’m saying is that it’s a lot to put on someone so young,” Bis’s dad said. “He’s only forty-seven.”

“He told me he was fifty!” Jenks exclaimed.

Etude’s wings opened, and I backed up in alarm, but he was only making the jump to the flat slab of cement. My expression blanked as he came forward on widely spaced toes. My God. He was huge. I froze, and Jenks darted away when the gargoyle put a sinewy, lightly furred arm over my shoulders, towering over me. “You and I both know that Bis is a good kid, but he’s just a kid,” he said softly, shifting his wings to block the other gargoyles’ sight of us.

Unnerved, I let him move me forward back onto the softer ground and away from the others. “They’re calling him the world breaker,” I prompted, and Etude snuffed, his pricked ears going flat for a moment. He smelled like an iron bell, and somehow it made my teeth hurt.

“He’s my son,” he said. “He’s bonded to you—a demon. I can see it in your aura. This isn’t what I wanted for him. Everyone wants their child to grow up a little better than they are,” Etude continued. “Settle down, raise a few goyles. Sing songs that resonate with the universe.”

“That’s not what I want for my kids,” Jenks said.

“I accept his choices,” Bis’s dad said, far too reasonably to make me comfortable. “Even if it means that he might have to live in the ever-after and never see the stars again.”

“I wouldn’t make him do that,” I protested, and his hand on my shoulder tensed, his claws pinching me for a bare second in warning.

“But you and I both know that Bis is not a great hero. He is a lob-winged klutz.”

My mouth dropped open, and I pulled out from under his wing. “Etude, I think you have sold your son short,” I said, facing him squarely, not liking that I had to look up at him. He was the size of a small elephant. “Your son, at the tender age of forty-seven, found and pulled my soul out of the ley lines when I had hardly a scrap of aura left to find it.” I jabbed a finger up at Etude’s bare, well-sculptured chest, and the gargoyle took a step back. “He jumped me to the only person possibly able to keep me alive,” I said, following him, chin raised as I got into his face. “He sang me
two
resonances that exist in
one
line so I could repair it!”

“Ah, Rache?” Jenks said, hovering over Etude’s shoulder, looking worried.

“That line right there,” I said angrily, pointing. “The one that you are all clustered around like it’s the last fire on a never-ending night! Right now, Bis is in the ever-after playing patty-cake with a psychotic demon who is trying to destroy the ever-after. He’s trying to learn all the lines in an ungodly short amount of time so we can save your fuzzy asses!”

“Rache?” Gargoyles were winging in from all over, their black shadows landing menacingly in a large circle.

“If your son is the world breaker, I’m going to see him through it!” I shouted.

Shaking, I dropped back, suddenly aware that glowing red and gold eyes watching me were backed by strong muscle that could wring dust from a rock like water from a sponge. But I wasn’t done yet. “Now you all can stay in my graveyard because I know the lines
suck
right now, and if they are giving me a headache, you must be in agony. But if you
ever
call Bis a lob-winged klutz again, I’m going to hunt you down at noon and chip your ear off!”

“Ah, Rache?” Jenks warbled.

“What do you want, pixy?” I snarled, my knees shaking as I stood with my hands on my hips.

“Never mind.”

Etude was eyeing me, his big red eyes assessing, and my arms somehow got tangled up over my middle. I knew it made me look afraid, but I was trying for pissed. I was both. “Perhaps,” Etude rumbled, his ears perking forward at me, “my son made a wise decision after all in his choice of weaponry. Can you keep him alive?”

His voice had changed, becoming respectful. I took a breath, hearing it shake as I exhaled. “I intend to,” I said softly, believing it.
Everyone wants me to protect someone. Who’s going to protect me?
“Down to my last breath.”

Etude looked me up and down again. Rising to his full stature, he gestured to someone behind me. I couldn’t stop my instinctive half step back, but Etude was smiling a savage black-toothed grin at me when he looked back. “In that case,” he said, shifting his wings behind him, “what do you want us to do with these two? We found them skulking about and think they’re up to mischief.”

“No fairy-farting way!” Jenks exclaimed, and I felt my face flash hot.

“Nick,” I said, not surprised, all my bile and anger distilled into that one word. I couldn’t help my smirk as I looked at Nick hanging between two gargoyles, his toes inches from the soggy, chill earth. Jax was sitting on the palm of another gargoyle, his wings tattered and his back to us, clearly wishing he was somewhere else. The hand of the gargoyle holding him was radiating a visible gentle heat, and seeing him, Jenks swore loud enough to make his son’s shoulders come up to his ears.