Wolves and the River of Stone (31 page)

“Yes, the devil’s in the details, so I hear.”

I wasn’t sure if I should laugh, but Zola thought it was hilarious.

A huge, dark hand belonging to an equally huge werewolf came up to greet me as I said, “Hey Alan, thanks for coming.”

“You couldn’t keep me away. Carter told us what’s going on. If this cult gets a bigger foothold in the country, we’ll be looking at war. I don’t want my kids to see something like that.”

“I don’t want your kids to see that either. I didn’t know you had kids.”

Alan nodded. “A boy and a girl. They both have the gift. I have a new understanding of the terrible twos.”

“Yeah, I bet,” I said. “I guess it’s pretty hard to wolf-proof the house.”

“You have no idea.”

I smiled, nodded to the rest of the table, and pulled up a chair. Sam was arguing with Vik in the corner of the booth. The other vampires were looking around nervously, as if a slayer might to materialize, complete with stake-firing bazooka. I could tell Dominic was trying to be calm, but his eyes flashed around the room every minute or so. I laughed to myself as Zola slid a plate of nachos toward me. “Thanks,” I said, and I shamelessly buried my face in them.

Foster skewered a jalapeno with his sword and dragged it through the cheese. “Oh, I love these things.”

“Demon Sword,” said an unfamiliar voice. “I have not seen a warrior such as you in many years.” The voice was thick and Russian.

Foster’s cheeks were puffed out, full of jalapeno as he looked up at the newcomer. My eyes followed his and I saw something new.

It was a vampire, the white-haired vampire from the van, but he wasn’t like any vampire I’d ever met. He was dead still, entirely unnatural, entirely other. His round features reminded me of my grandfather, like a pure-blooded Russian bear, but just looking at the long, stark white hair framing his pale flesh and black eyes made my aura try to crawl inside me and hide. The man leaked power.

“Vassili!” Sam said. “The wet one is my brother, Damian.”

Vik’s apprehension of Vassili suddenly made a world of sense and I was baffled as to why Sam had none. I held my hand out and didn’t even cringe when the vampire took it. Go me.

“
Privet,
Vesik, ah, it’s a good name, yes.” Vassili’s cold visage fractured into a huge smile and he shook my hand with vigor. I was so shocked I just stared at him.

“I am not as bad as you have been hearing, I am sure.”

“No, it’s just, ah, it’s nice to meet you too.”

“Come now, I am certain there is more on your mind. Speak your questions, I am patient.”

I saw Vik’s head twitch to the side in a tiny warning. I decided to be polite. “Why, that is, why are you here ... sir?”

“I will tell you, so long as you do not call me sir.” Vassili smiled and I tried not to stare at his bright white eyebrows. “Do we have an accord?”

“A what?” I said.

“An agreement.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Good, then I will tell you why I am here. Your master, I have spoken with her on occasion, has promised us an immunity from the necromancers. Such an opportunity, well, I could not pass.” He held his hand out and closed it into a fist.

I glanced at Zola. “You’re a master of bribery.”

She grinned and pointed back to Vassili.

“So, your master, clever as she is, will only grant this gift to those of us helping to kill the dark necromancers. That is why I am here. I wish to have this immunity. You understand,
da?”

I nodded.

“Excellent!” He crossed his arms and nodded.

The server came by, a small brunette with huge eyes and a thin nose. She stared up at Vassili with a vacant smile. “Can I get you anything else, sir?”

“No, my beauty, but please see to my friends,” Vassili said.

The server turned to us and said, “Do you need anything?”

“I could go for a cola.”

“Get some chicken strips,” Foster said.

“And chicken strips,” I said.

She scribbled something on her little pad of paper and said, “I’ll be right back with that.”

The vampires squished together to give Vassili room to sit down. There was still tension as the wolves and the undead exchanged meaningful glances. That’s about as nice as I can put it, but really it was a bit more hostile. Alan’s face was wired tight and his eyes were fixed on Vassili.

“Peace, wolf. I do not bite.” He paused and frowned before a smile lightened his face. “Well, that is not exactly true,
da?”

Everyone laughed, even Dominic and Alan. I relaxed more and more as the meal wrapped up. Haka’s shoulders deflated and he began talking to Mary. Mary was laughing and kept putting her hand on Haka’s forearm. I caught Hugh glancing at the pair at regular intervals and could only imagine what he was thinking. Foster was lying beside a half-eaten chicken strip, groaning with his face smeared in honey mustard.

“We need to leave,” Carter said. “If we want to make it to Stones River at nightfall, we need to be on the road soon.”

Vassili held two fingers up in the air and beckoned for the server. She almost fell down, she came running so fast. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a money clip. It was stuffed, and the bill on the outside was a hundred. He peeled off two, handed them to the server, and said, “I do not need change, my beauty.”

The server didn’t even seem to register how much money Vassili had just given her. She just stood there and stared at him with that same vacant smile. I looked. I had to. I raised my Sight and was awed by the control Vassili had of his aura. It didn’t flare out and chase everything in the room that was a potential meal like Sam’s did. It was focused on the girl, reds and deep blues caressing her aura. I could see the colors shiver along the lines of contact. I shook my head and rid myself of the vision.

“Get some ham steaks, Damian,” Cara said.

“What for?”

“Do you want hungry cu siths getting grumpy in a small, enclosed space?”

“Ah, no. Miss? Could we get a few ham steaks to go?”

The server glanced at me and nodded her head. She kept looking back at Vassili as she wandered into the kitchen. She came back out almost instantly with To Go boxes in her hands.

“There is no way they cooked those that fast,” I said.

“You think she took someone else’s?” Aideen said.

I shrugged and smiled as the server held out the boxes.

“
Dasvidaniya.”
Vassili leaned over to kiss the server’s hand and the poor girl looked like she was about to melt.

We all got up and filed toward the front door. Almost every patron in the restaurant stared at us on the way.

“You’re quite a charmer, Vassili,” Maggie said.

Vassili wore a flat expression as he turned to Maggie. A small smile lifted his cheeks. “Thank you, wolf mother.”

Maggie blinked a few times and almost stumbled. Wolf mother was a term of endearment, almost respect, that vampires generally did
not
use.

Vassili scared the hell out of me.

I piled into the van with the werewolves, and the fairies, and the vampires, and the cu siths. I was scrunched between Maggie and Zola. I heard Haka laugh in the far back with Vik, Sam, and Mary. I’m sure Hugh was thrilled. Bubbles laid her claim to Alan’s lap. Her green paws were hooked over the back of the second seat and her black nose sniffed at me as we started down the highway.

“Hey, Bubbles. Look what I got you.” I held out a small pile of ham steaks. Bubbles’s tongue shot out and tested the meat a second before her head followed and snatched the steaks out of my hand. She spun, ham steaks swinging from her jaw, and smacked Alan in the face with them. He grunted as she wriggled up to the front seats and started eating between Carter and Vassili. Dominic held his hand over his face, but belted out a laugh despite his best efforts. Alan shook his head and I caught the edge of a smile.

“You were right, Cara. Good thing I got a lot of ham.” I pulled another pile of ham steaks out of a To Go box. Peanut materialized from beneath the seat in front of us, grabbed the steaks, and dragged them to their doom beneath the bench.

Some of the tension seemed to be leaving the group. Enough that I started to doze off as the rhythm of the highway sank in. My eyes shot open when the entire van started laughing.

“What’d I miss?” I said as I rubbed my eyes.

“Nixie, apparently,” Mary said. “You kept saying her name.”

I think my blush probably came close to turning me purple. “No, that can’t be–”

Even Vassili laughed at me from the front seat. “I am impressed, Vesik. Sleeping on the cusp of a battle? You have strong guts.”

“Or a weak brain,” Sam said, eliciting another round of laughter.

“Face it, D. You’ve got it bad,” Foster said.

“You know what a mess it would be?” Maggie said. “Dating a water witch? The girl is born to kill.” This from a werewolf.

“What am I supposed to do about that?” I said. “I can tell her she doesn’t have to, but she says there are rules, laws even.”

“Nothing,” Hugh said. “You do nothing. You can only accept her ... but I have seen her change much in recent days.”

Zola’s laugh caught my attention. “Damian,” she said. “Damian, Hugh is right. Nixie’s bloodlust is almost lost. Do you know why? Do you know what can break an undine’s nature?”

I shook my head.

“Nixie doesn’t want to kill anymore because she’s falling in love with you,” Cara said. “I think it started when she saved Haka.”

Haka didn’t comment. Mired in a conversation with Mary, I doubt he’d heard Cara.

“You aren’t a weekend fling for her,” Cara said. “Her nature is being fundamentally torn apart. She is questioning everything she knows. To be honest, I don’t know if
you
can come out of it unchanged, never mind her.”

“You really think she loves him?” Maggie said, leaning forward to glance between Zola and the fairies.

“Oh god, can we talk about something else?” I said.

Zola chuckled. “For some strange reason, yes. She seems quite attached to the boy.”

“She’s not even
human,”
Sam said.

“Neither are
you,
da?”

Sam glared at Vassili and he just laughed.

“Neither are most of the people in this van,” Carter said.

Zola smiled. “There was a time we couldn’t have been in this van together.”

“Hell, three days ago we couldn’t have been in this van together without killing each other,” Alan muttered.

“Ah mean more than that,” Zola said. “Not just werewolves and vampires, fairies and necromancers, but black skin, white skin, red, brown.”

“What does it matter?” Mike said. “Human. Fae. The difference is not so great. Everyone bleeds. Everyone dies.”

“
Da,
I remember Zola,” Vassili said. “My first Pit, they said you were dirtying your fangs if you feasted on more ... exotic fare.”

“Ah remember too,” Zola said. “But now, this is a better world. An open world, not like the one Philip wants to bring about. Ah will stand against him until Ah’m dead, or he is.”

“We all will, Zola,” Sam said. Even Vassili nodded in agreement.

“Once Ah would have let it burn, let everyone die, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me. Ah would have felt nothing.” She wrung her hands around her knobby cane. “Now ... now Ah would die to stop him.”

“So would everyone here,” Carter said.

“
Da,”
Vassili said. “Undoubtedly.”

***

We’d been on the road for almost an hour when Mike the Demon broke the silence.

“I always was a sucker for a love story,” he said.

We all stared at him. The van drifted in the lane a bit as Carter’s eyes locked onto the rearview mirror. His eyebrows were almost raised to his hairline.

“Really?” I said with half a snort before Aeros’s story came back to me. Mike had sworn an unbreakable oath on the Smith’s Hammer to never kill an innocent. If he did, the power in the hammer would destroy him. And he’d done it all for the love of a necromancer. “Really?” I said in a much more subdued tone.

“Yes, and I think I know something that can help you,” he said. “I’m sure Nixie told you fire demons used to kill undines on sight.”

I nodded.

“There are ... arts ... that can kill any undine. Even the Queen of the water witches. You already have the tools you need.”

“What do you mean? I don’t use fallen arts.”

“Perhaps, but you see Damian, you already have the
tools
you need,” Mike said again. “I know who wrote the Book of Shadows you’ve been reading.”

“What?” I said, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.

Mike nodded. “I sold it to Frank because I knew it would end up in your hands. It’s safer in your hands than mine. Hold the book upside down and speak the incantation,
Aperio tectus veneficium.”