Promises to Keep

chapter 21


“IT SEEMS I overestimated Xeke’s instinct for survival,” Rikai explained as she reached a hand down and unceremoniously yanked Jay to his feet. “So we’re back.”

You don’t sound bitter about that at all, Jay thought, though he held his tongue. They needed Rikai’s help, grudging or not.

“You look good,” Jay remarked, looking between the two of them. Rikai’s visible scars were gone, and the strength she had demonstrated helping him up was well beyond what she could have managed earlier. Xeke was a little flushed but clear-eyed.

“Thanks,” Xeke answered. “You look like crap.”

The vampire reached around Jay to brush snow off his back, which put him close enough to kiss—or bite, which was why Jay tensed, recalling what Rikai had said about Xeke waking up starving.

“Has Brina won you from me already?” Xeke teased, noticing the withdrawal.

“What?” Jay knew perfectly well that Xeke was a flirt by nature. He shouldn’t take it personally. So why did the vampire have this ability to tongue-tie him? “No, I just—Rikai seemed to think you were in rough shape. Are you okay?”

Xeke kissed Jay’s cheek before stepping back. “Rikai did some kind of magical rewiring,” he answered. “I don’t understand it, but I feel pretty good.”

“Whenever vampires feed, they give power to Leona,” Rikai explained. “Their current madness is the result of her needing strength for battle. Thankfully, one of Xeke’s progenitors has a bond to an earth elemental called Leshan.” Rikai shrugged, as if this were perfectly normal, and common knowledge. “I was able to partially block Xeke’s connection to Leona and tighten his bond to Leshan, which should protect him from the worst of the fallout.”

“What’s with the L names, anyway?” Xeke asked, apparently uninterested in the magical mechanics of his salvation. “Leona, Leshan, LeCoire; most of the elementals I know have L names.”

“An elemental’s true name is closely guarded,” Rikai answered. “Wise sorcerers,” she said, with a sharp glance at Jay, “may spend decades, perhaps even generations, trying to divine the true name of an elemental before ever speaking to or summoning it, since that name will give a mortal power over the immortal. The names we use are as real as an Internet messaging handle. The prefix le means ‘a power or impetus,’ in the ancient language,” Rikai answered, “which is the language used among the elementals.” Still focused on Jay, she added, “Idiot would-be sorcerers, on the other hand, meddle without any preparation or understanding of the powers with which they are playing, and cause things like this.”

Jay was still flinching from the heat in her gaze when Xeke broke in.

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard the ‘idiot would-be sorcerers’ speech a hundred times today alone. Someone who becomes a vampire hunter either has an irresistible urge to murder people or an irresistible urge to get killed protecting strangers. Blaming them for poorly planned, suicidal stunts in the line of duty is like blaming a cat for jumping after that stupid red dot.”

“Thank you, Xeke, for that very flattering defense,” Jay said. “So the short story is, you two are safe for now?”

“Yes,” Rikai answered. “As are you. Currently, the Shantel elemental has tied itself to you, and severed your bond to Leona. If Shantel wins, you keep that bond. If Leona wins, she will surely take you back like a prize of war. You will be fine. So please convince this fool friend of mine that we do not need to risk our lives trying to fight the immortals.”

Jay glanced at Xeke, who raised a brow, thinking to Jay, Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, hunters gotta hunt. You won’t walk away from this.

“Someone told us that, if we had a sorcerer to help and could get to Shantel territory, we might be able to do something there,” Jay said. “Brina is inside, and she knows where Shantel land was.”

Reluctantly, Rikai nodded. “That would be the best place to make a stand, yes. It would put us inside the strongest of the elemental’s defenses.”

They had a plan. It was crazy, but it was a plan. Step one was going to Shantel land, which was apparently a good distance away. Rikai seemed to think that once they were inside Shantel territory, they would have some leverage over the elemental. Step two would be summoning the elemental and then, as far as Jay could tell, completely winging the next phase and hoping they could find a way to control a creature with godlike power and a whole lot of wrath. That part relied on Rikai, so it was okay that Jay didn’t understand it all.

“We should fly,” Brina said with a trill of excitement, as she pointed to their destination on a map. Planes had not existed when she was mortal, and as a vampire, she had never needed one.

“We’ll need equipment to travel in the snow,” Jay added, in response to Brina’s mental images of the area.

“I’ll talk to my people and get the jet ready,” Xeke said. He pulled out his wallet and opened it to retrieve an outrageously shiny silver card, which he held out to Jay. “Do you think you can put together everything we’ll need?”

Jay took the credit card with a kind of reverence. He received a small allowance from his family, but he wasn’t the type to maintain credit.

“I might not be able to get to all the stores we need before they close,” he answered, compiling a list in his head, and realizing it was already nearly dark again. “But I’ll manage.”

Rikai let out a long, exasperated sigh before saying, “If we are going to fly across the country to fight elementals, I will need additional supplies.”

“I will go with Jay,” Brina announced. She glanced down at her long gown, thinking, This is not at all ideal for a winter wonderland adventure.

Without intending to, Jay found himself humming a bar of the song “Winter Wonderland,” which made Brina laugh, which in turn made Xeke and Rikai stare at them both as if they were lunatics.

“We’ll meet at the airport,” Xeke said. “Remember, we’re all on borrowed time.”

Brina handled being waited on by staff excited to help them better than Jay did. While Jay grabbed the basics—topping a thousand dollars before he had even finished choosing a tent and backpacks—Brina gathered suggestions on food and clothing. At least a dozen times, he heard her bell-like laugh before she assured worried store employees, “He knows what he’s doing.”

“Don’t worry. We’ve got a friend who’s an expert,” Jay kept assuring the friendly staff who buzzed around them, concerned that Jay and Brina were embarking on a deep-woods winter backpacking trip with next to no experience, as evidenced by their total lack of gear.

Jay had backpacked before, even in the deepest winter, but between his magic and his connection to Lynx, he had always been able to go minimalist. In a pinch, Jay could sleep in a snowdrift and be fine. None of his backpacking equipment was relevant to what they were embarking on now.

Disgusting stuff, Brina thought as she gamely chose polyester undergarments and jackets designed to keep a human body warmer than natural fibers would. Vile texture. No wonder humans get so cranky.

The adventure continued at the next store, which had been closed for an hour. Jay broke in through a back door, hoping there wasn’t an automatic alarm and that—if any of them lived through this—SingleEarth could deal with any legal repercussions relating to the blinking security cameras.

Brina followed with a quiver of excitement. She helped grab additional fuel, food, and the last odds and ends the first store hadn’t had in stock. They didn’t dare stay long, in case police were coming.

Satisfied that they had done the best they could with limited time, an apparently unlimited budget, and a desire not to go to jail, they squeezed into the over-full car and sped away to the rendezvous point. Lynx curled up on Brina’s lap, oblivious to the passengers’ rapid conversation, as Brina asked question after question about how humans traveled and survived in such conditions.

Jay spent most of the three-hour ride in Xeke’s private jet opening packages and compulsively packing and repacking backpacks. No matter what other equipment they brought, he felt naked without his Marinitch blade. His magic might still feel the same to him, but whatever the Shantel elemental had done to him, it had made his own knife violently reject him. No amount of butane fuel, freeze-dried food, warm clothes, or high-tech gadgets would make him feel good about the lack of his blade.

As they transferred from the jet to a rented Jeep, Jay continued working on the problem of how to lug all their gear with them. Jay could carry a heavy backpack over a long distance, but Brina probably couldn’t. Xeke lifted his for the first time and immediately said, “I can take more,” while Rikai attempted to lift hers and then shook her head. She wasn’t as crippled as before, but her strength was even more limited than a human’s.

Jay was still fiddling with the packs as they reached the edge of the proverbial deep dark forest. They had been able to drive as far as a campground, with trails leading into one of the largest national forests. After those paths ended, they would have to blaze their own trail through the evergreen trees.

“At least it’s not a stormy night,” Jay remarked as he stepped down from the Jeep, earning a glare from Rikai, a quirked brow from Xeke, and a chuckle from Brina. Lynx leapt out of Brina’s lap, his senses on full alert.

In fact, it was an overcast and chill dawn. The ground held a few inches of snow, crusted with ice in many places. They had brought snowshoes, but Jay hoped they wouldn’t be needed, since he was the only one with any experience using them.

Check it out? Jay asked Lynx as he arranged their supplies on a modified sled known as a pulk. The cat ran off to scout, and Jay kept packing. Given that they had no firm idea of how long they would need to travel, he had brought as much food and fuel as they could possibly transport. He hoped the snow would stay thick enough for the sled to slide smoothly.

“Do you need help?” Xeke asked, startling Jay from his contemplation of weight and balance.

“How’s this?” he asked, offering Xeke the repacked backpack, which was now significantly heavier than a human would be able to carry for any length of time.

The vampire tested the pack, and then nodded.

Want rabbit for dinner? Lynx asked as he returned. That or chipmunk. Also smells of deer and coyote.

Let me know if you scent anything else, Jay said. Especially anything big enough to eat us.

He had almost finished setting up the pulk, when he was startled by another thought, just as clear as Lynx’s but from an entirely different mind.

See the way the branches sparkle where they’re encased in ice, Brina thought to him.

To both of them, Jay realized only when Lynx replied, Slippery to walk on. And sometimes it drops on your head when you sleep.

Brina looked around, as if almost aware of Lynx’s reply but unable to place the sound.

“It is lovely,” Jay agreed.

“I could do a beautiful portrait of the lynx,” Brina remarked. Did she realize she hadn’t started the conversation out loud?

She talks like you do, Lynx replied to Jay’s contemplation. Half in voice-yips, half in mind. And she expects people to hear both, just like you do.

Was that the result of having been telepathic for years, as a vampire? Or just another one of Brina’s quirks?

“We should get going,” Rikai said, staring at the mouth of the path with frustration. After the second time Jay had repacked her bag, she had taken half the items out to accommodate her ritual paraphernalia.

Jay glanced down at the clunky watchlike GPS thing he never would have touched if he had been spending his own money or wandering familiar forests. Xeke had given the device coordinates based on Brina’s best guess as she’d looked at a series of maps, and it currently claimed that their destination was about thirty-five miles to the northeast. With fair weather, good trails, and experienced hikers, that distance could easily be traveled in a couple days, but Jay doubted they would have any of those luxuries.

They didn’t even have a straight path to their destination. Instead, they headed first to the base of the original Midnight, from which Brina believed it was only a short journey to Shantel territory—assuming that her estimate of Midnight’s location was correct, that they could find Midnight without getting trapped in its magical gravity well, and that the magic in the Shantel land didn’t throw them back out.

Rikai believed that the Shantel power would draw them in, because Jay and Brina were now bonded to it, but even she admitted that was just a theory.

Yes, if all went well, they should be able to confront a homicidal immortal very soon.