Devil's Gate

Even though he didn’t need to breathe, his humanity had not left him, she saw, as he blew out a breath. “You absolutely should not have done that,” he said. “I didn’t realize I would be transferred to Julian himself, or I never would have called. Then at that point the phone call took a dive straight into the toilet.”

 

 

“Well, since the damage is done,” she said, as she sat up. “If you don’t mind me asking, why won’t Julian let Carling have access to the island? Is it because he doesn’t want her to have her library?”

 

“I don’t think so,” Duncan said. “It’s useless as anything but a retreat. As an Other land, it’s illegal for anyone from Earth to harvest anything from the island for commercial gain, and Carling has filed evidence that an intelligent indigenous winged species lives in the redwoods. And Julian doesn’t give a damn one way or another about Carling’s library. In fact, he insists that Carling send librarian witches to pack it all up and transport it. On the other hand, Carling insists—and she does have the legal right of it—that she have free access to her own house and that she sees to the transportation of the library personally.”

 

“But he doesn’t want to let her do that,” she said.

 

“No, he doesn’t,” Duncan said. “Now that he’s made his stance and exiled her, he doesn’t want to allow Carling anywhere near the border of his demesne, especially at the crossover passageway for the island where it would be so easy for her to slip quietly into the Nightkind demesne. He certainly does not want to acknowledge that she has the right to come and go as she pleases.”

 

She sat up and folded the blanket, and he slid out from the table where his work lay spread and walked over to sit beside her on the couch. Three of her snakes slipped over his shoulder to peer at him.

 

He smiled and held out his hand to them. They twined around his forearm as she confessed, “I always wondered how you felt about their estrangement.”

 

“To be brutally fair, I can see both sides,” he said. “Julian made some mistakes and trusted the wrong person, and last year Carling really had been dangerous to be around. I think they could actually get past it all if Julian was willing to submit to Carling’s dominance again. But I also think something inside of him has broken, and he can’t do that again. And I must take Carling’s side in all of this.”

 

The conversation had slipped squarely into Vampyre territory, and Seremela frowned, unsure about how comfortable she felt with the subject. She looked down at her hands as she said carefully, “The bond between a Vampyre maker and her progeny is something difficult to understand from the outside. I suppose you must take Carling’s side, mustn’t you?”

 

“Do you mean, did Carling order me to take her side?” Duncan asked. He smiled at her, all vestiges of the hard edged stranger gone. “No, she didn’t. She wouldn’t do that. I must take Carling’s side because I love her, and I agree with her stance more than I agree with Julian’s. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see Julian’s side of things too.”

 

His ability to see all perspectives of a situation would be one of the things that made him such an outstanding attorney. She had to smile. It could make him an outstanding friend as well. Or enemy. It was one more thing that she liked so much about him. His quiet, incisive intelligence had its own kind of bite.

 

He was still speaking. He said, “And there’s also a big difference between me and Julian.”

 

“What difference is that?” she asked, growing fascinated despite her initial discomfort.

 

A thrill ran through her nerve endings as Duncan took one of her hands and played with her fingers. “Thousands of years,” he told her. “You see, I accept Carling’s rule over me. She made me, and I’m young enough to remember how I felt when I agreed to that. Yes, she has the Power to force me to her will, but in the last hundred and seventy years, she has almost never done so, and she never has without having a compelling reason for it. But Julian was turned at the height of the Roman Empire. He and Carling, and Rune too—the three of them are different from us.”

 

“Us?” she repeated in surprise. “As in you and me?”

 

“Yes, as in you and me,” he said.

 

She smiled at him, amused. “Do you realize I’m probably close to two hundred years older than you?”

 

He grinned. “I was thirty when I was turned, so if you’re over three hundred and fifty, then yes, you are. But the age difference between you and me is a drop in the bucket when you look at millennia. They are all so much older than we are. I think it makes them fundamentally different in some way. And Julian is very dominant. Carling has never changed anyone against their will, so he must have once, long, long ago, agreed to her dominance, but I think he has chafed under her Power for a very long time. Imagine what it must have been like for him when it looked like she was dying.”