CHAPTER 9
I SAT ON MY PORCH, ALTERNATING BETWEEN A bottle of Hard Lemonade and Boone's Farm Sangria, and watched the night breathe. It was very quiet. The night breezes had died and nothing troubled the dark leaves on poplar branches. Not a blade of grass stirred on the lawn below.
I took a big swig of sangria and another of lemonade. Not drinking so much, but getting drunk. Making my body feel as bad as my mind. I wished I had some beer to chase down the wine. It would make me sick faster.
I'd accomplished quite a bit. It was hard to sit here and not be proud of myself. I'd failed to find Greg's killer. He would murder again, he would kill young women, he would kill shapechangers, and I didn't even know where to look for him. I'd pissed away whatever meager credibility I'd had with the Pack. And with the Order, for that matter. I had a thing going with a nice guy. It wasn't perfect, but he liked me. He had tried pretty hard. A normal, decent guy. And I had broken our little relationship beyond all repair. He wasn't a part of my world so I brought him into it. On my terms.
I turned one of the bottles upside down, guzzling the liquid without tasting it, until I almost choked, and raised it in a salute to the distant line of trees. "Nice going."
The trees said nothing. I shook my head and reached for the other bottle.
And saw a monster in my yard.
It sat on its hunches, sniffing at the wind. A large bastard, at least a hundred and sixty pounds. Long grayish fur grew in patches on its lean carcass. Bare skin, pale and wrinkled, showed between the irregularly shaped spots of fur, especially on the stomach, where long, ragged scars crisscrossed the flesh. A small hump protruded from the beast's back, and the fur covering it was longer and coarser, forming a matted mane that flared just behind the large head crowned with round human ears.
The thing's hind legs were heavy and muscled and shaped somewhat like those of a canine, but with longer digits. Its front paws, smaller and disturbingly human in shape, clutched something dark. I squinted at the wet fuzzy clump. A squirrel. The creature sniffed at its prize with long wrinkled muzzle, opened massive jaws, and tore into the squirrel. A sickening crunching of broken bones disturbed the night's silence.
It chewed with gusto, squeezing the bloody stump in its hands and looked at me. The small bloodshot eyes that glared from the beast's face were undeniably human. When you looked into the eyes of a shapechanger, you saw a beast clawing to get out. When I looked into this thing's eyes, they burned with understanding, dim yet significant intelligence, betraying sadness and a capacity for suffering.
The thing raised its horrid maw to the sky and made an eerie lingering noise, as if a dozen voices murmured the same phrase in a dozen languages at once. Then it turned to the squirrel and bit off another morsel.
A faint scraping of claws reached my ears. I glanced about me. Grotesque shapes hid in the shadowy comers, some small, some large. They perched on the rails, they slunk below, around the porch stairs, and darted under the truck in the driveway, shifting and moving all around me.
The rim of the bottle touched my lips and I drank, as the beasts drew closer.
"Poor Crest," a velvet voice murmured. "I've been alive for three hundred years and I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard."
I set the bottle down with marked slowness and looked toward the voice. "It's you," I said. "Shit. I would've never thought."
Bono smiled at me, showing even teeth, white and inhumanly sharp. There were too many of them, too. Funny how I never noticed it before.
The black, spiky, gel-saturated hair was gone, and long sleek strands fell to his shoulders. They were gray, the odd dark gray of dirty duct tape. His skin was pale and smooth, and I was seeing too much of it, since Bono chose to appear nude, except for something resembling a kilt or a skirt that hung from his hips, doing a piss-poor job of covering whatever it was supposed to cover.
The world went fuzzy. I rubbed my forehead. The wine was kicking in.
Bono slid from the rail on which he had been perching. He moved with liquid slickness across the porch, seamlessly coming to all fours and lowering himself to the floorboards to sit beside me.
There was something so alien in the way he moved, in how he sat, how he smelled, how he looked at me with the eyes brimming with hate, something so inhuman that my brain stopped, smashing against that inhumanity like a brick wall. He made me want to scream.
I forced myself to sit still. The effort burned some alcohol and the view didn't seem as blurry.
In the yard several smaller creatures waited impatiently as the large one finished his squirrel.
"It's hard for you, isn't it?" the upir said softly. "It's hard to sit next to me like this. You want to scream and run, run as fast as you can across the grass, never looking back, knowing that you can't escape but running still because it's better to die with your back to me. Do you know why that is? Because your body knows that you are food, to be used, eaten, and discarded."
I brought the bottle to my lips and took a small sip. "How many cheesy novels did you have to read to come up with that one?"
He leaned, lowering himself until he lay on his side, his head supported by the arm bent at his elbow. "Laugh, Kate. It's the last opportunity you'll have."
I shrugged. In the yard the squirrel hunter took a swipe at a smaller, hideous thing that darted to nip at the tuff of fur in his hand. The smaller creature yelped, readied for another pass, and froze, its short, nearly translucent tail quivering, gripped by an invisible hand. It stood stiff, thick legs far apart. The quivering spread up its spine, until its neck trembled. The phantom hand squeezed hard one last time and released it. The creature jerked and collapsed. Shaking, it gained its feet and stumbled away, whining softly, its tail between its legs.
"Children misbehave sometimes," Bono said. "They need to be punished. If you're wondering, I can do it to my women, too."
He stared at the big creature and it walked toward us. "Let's get the introductions out of the way," the upir said. "This is my eldest son at the moment. I call him Arag. Arag, this is a future dinner. Future dinner, this is Arag."
Arag's human eyes, sunken deep into his deformed skull, teared up.
"What the hell did you…"
"Baboon." The upir shook his head. "Strong, cruel, aggressive. Unfortunately, he got a little more from me than from his mother. He can speak. Say something for Kate, Arag."
The monster looked down at his hands. He shifted from foot to foot, unsure, and emitted a long distorted screech, like nails scraping against chalkboard. "Bloood," he shrieked.
"Sad, isn't it?" Bono smiled. "He walks the Earth, a pitiful, wretched creature, uttering words at random, longing for something—he himself doesn't know what—and hating everyone and everything. I tried ripping out his vocal cords, but the damn things just grow back."
"Blooood." Arag sighed.
The upir waved him away. "Go on."
Arag returned to his post in the yard. The upir sighed. "I'm thinking of killing him when we're done here. You think I should?"
I swallowed more wine.
"It won't help," Bono said.
I shrugged and drank some more. "Why make an alliance with Olathe?"
"Why not? It was a good plan. Sooner or later the half-breeds and the necromancers would've warred, and Olathe would take over the vampire stables. I'd have enough vampire meat to gorge myself sick. Vampire flesh is the best, Kate. It's aged and flavorful, like a fine wine."
"You ate shapechangers, too."
"Their magic strengthens me." Bono grimaced. "But they taste like shit."
His fingers touched my hair. He picked up a strand and raised it to his nostrils.
"I bet the original plan was to put a bun in Olathe's oven."
He bared his teeth. "The bitch was barren—can you believe that?" He twisted my hair around his fingers and looked through it at the moon. I pulled away and he let the strands slip from his hand with a chuckle. "But then I stumbled onto you. And you're not barren, Kate."
"Why me?"
He leaned close, his breath hot on my cheek. "I know what you are. I've climbed the hill and sniffed the grave of that rotting sack of bones you called Father. I smelled his stink and I know his blood isn't in your veins. And I know whose is. All of that power crammed into a tight, sweet little package. Did you know your real father hunted my kind thousands of years ago? Your puny little mind can't comprehend the extent of my hate for him. You will give me a son, Kate. And all of the magic of your bloodline will belong to me."
He laughed softly and I had to swallow a scream. "Why did you kill Greg?"
"He was getting too close to me. Olathe's little subterfuge failed to fool him. I knew I would have to kill him sooner or later. The trick was to do it so you'd leave your precious warded house and come after the killer."
"You wanted me to confront Olathe. You wanted to know if my blood was stronger than hers."
"Yes. It took you so long to figure it out. I practically drew a map for you. I hand-fed you every crumb. All you had to do was to follow the trail but you meandered and backtracked. An ape could've gotten it faster. But then, you and an ape are only a small step apart."
He licked my cheek. "The magic is thick tonight and I grow hungry. There is a fresh corpse waiting for me at my place. And more will be coming. There are many necromancers among the People who would rather serve me than that fool on his gilded throne. Let's end this, what do you say?"
I said nothing.
"No clever remark? Are you scared, Kate?" His voice dropped to a whisper, but the words he said thundered with power. "Estene aleera hesaad de viren aneda." And now, you are forever mine.
Oh Dear God. For him power words were a language. The strength of the ancient magic gripped me, crushing my mind with its enormity. The whirlwind of light swirled about me, carrying me away into unknown depths. I bit my tongue and tasted my blood. Something furious and defiant rose inside me and screamed. Blinded by the light, I heard myself speak a single word.
"Dair."
Release.
The light dimmed and I saw Bono's eyes staring into mine. Unfamiliar words came, surfacing from someplace long forgotten, their meaning somehow clear. "At ner tervan estene." I'll kill you first.
I smashed the bottle against the stairs. The glass shattered, spilling across concrete. I rammed the razor-sharp edge into his throat. Blood sprayed over me.
"Ud." Die.
The ground shook with the power I sank into the word. The upir fell, blood gushing from his throat. I lunged to the door and dove through. The ward flowed closed behind me.
An odd gurgling noise came from the upir. It struggled from his ruined throat, bubbling forth with the gushes of dark blood. Bono reached for the bottle. His fingers closed about the blood-slicked glass, slid, fastened around the edge, the glass slicing into the flesh of his fingers. He pulled and ripped the bottle from his neck, dropping it gently onto the boards.
The gurgling noise strengthened, expelling blood with each tortured cough. Glass shards slid from the wound, carried down by the crimson flow. A hideous creature crept onto the porch to sniff the bloody bottle. Bono grabbed it with one hand and flung the forty-pound thing over the rails like a kitten.
His fingers grazed the awful cut, wiping away the blood. The wound was closing. As it sealed shut, the gurgling noise mutated, growing louder, and I realized that Bono was laughing.
"Nice try," he said, displaying his unscarred neck. "My turn."
He leaped at the open door. An explosion of crimson rolled through the doorway and he howled, thrown back.
He flipped and spun about, his eyes blazing. Silver from his eyes leaked onto his cheeks, staining the skin. There was nothing at all human about him now.
He lunged again and saw the sharp, angular vampire bones guarding the doorway from the inside.
"Bitch!"
"Rock, wood, and bone, Bono," I said dully. "Your ward is reinforcing mine."
He screamed. The windows vibrated. I threw my hands against my ears. Bono pounded his fists against the porch floor and the boards exploded.
"Won't work," I told him. "You can demolish the whole house. The ward will still stand."
He stared at me, silvery streaks wetting his face as if he cried metal instead of tears. His offspring shivered and hugged the ground. "This isn't over," he howled. "I will murder all that give you protection. I'll kill the cat and I'll devour his flesh. His magic will be mine and then I'll come back. No ward will guard you then!"
He leaped from the porch, racing into the night, and his brood followed him.
I leaned my head against the wall. The booze made it hard to think. He didn't die. I hadn't expected him to. One who can weave the power words into sentences wouldn't die from a single word.
The cat? He said he'd kill the cat. Was he talking about Jim? No, Curran, it had to be Curran. Jim wasn't strong enough to threaten my ward. Curran was. All shapechangers had a natural resistance to warding spells. It had to do with the animal part of their nature. Curran's resistance was the strongest. I could call Jim and warn him.
Who would believe me?
"'And men my prophet wail deride!'" I mumbled and dragged myself to my feet.
I called Jim anyway. He didn't answer the call and the answering machine did not pick up.