Upstairs in a private office, he arranged himself behind a mirror-polished desk. I stood before him like a supplicant, but I was past caring.
“They killed Zhen on the stairs.” My throat was full. “My beautiful dancer. And Virginia in the library. She fought back. The young ones were in the cellar. Peter, and Amelie.” I swallowed grief like a stone. “They were burned. And mutilated . Stakes through their hearts.”
“Ah,” Leonidas said, and nothing more.
“What do you intend to do ?” My hands were fists.
He shrugged, a loose inhuman motion. “What can I do? I am no Preserver. And your charges are not the first to fall. The hunters are mortals, and they take only easy prey.”
So he knew of this. Easy prey. I stared at him. What mortals could kill even the youngest and slowest of us? And yet.
Tarquin, at his shoulder, looked steadily back. His shoulders were tense. Another indirect compliment.
“Then I shall trouble you no further.” I turned on my heel. My boots left black streaks on the creamy carpet.
“Eleni.” Tarquin’s voice, flat and heatless. “Try the Hephaestus, downtown.”
I paused. Inclined my head slightly. Leonidas’s anger filled the room, but what was his anger to me?
“I am in your debt, Tarquin,” I said softly, and stalked away.
*
I did not venture downtown often. For one thing, it was dangerous. For another, it was … confusing. The bright lights, the crowds, the cars … it was easier and safer to gather what I needed for my little family elsewhere. I am a Preserver, I preserve what would otherwise be lost in the deep waters of time. Each of my charges was a gem, skilled in an art that could reach its highest expression when freed from the chains of mortality.
All that, gone. Lost in a nightmare of fire and screaming. Only I remained. And the thin bright trail of bloodscent—the weakest male attacker had been bleeding as he left my home. Without Tarquin’s hinting, I might have lost his scent.
But no. At the corner of Bride Street I found the golden thread. It turned at corners, flared and faded, drifted with the wind. It is a predator’s instinct, to bring down the weakest in the pack first.
Besides, the weakest break more easily.
The Hephaestus was a slumped brownstone building, weary even though the night was young. It reeked of desperation. I passed through the foyer like a burning dream, the proprietor not even glancing away from his television screen. I expected the smell to take me up into a room, but it did not. A hall on the ground floor led to a fire door that did not make a sound as I pushed it open. I stepped out and halted for a moment. Greasy crud slid under my bootsoles.
The blind alley was old, close, and dank. Refuse filled its corners. At its end, a single door. The blood trail led to it, but there was a heavier reek filling the air.
I approached cautiously. There was no outlet, this was a remnant of an earlier time. I wondered if the bricks underfoot were as old as Amelie.
My heart, that senseless beating thing, wrung in on itself. I ghosted to the door, every sense alert as if I were hunting for my family. My chest ran with pain at the thought.
I laid a hand on the door. It was solid, vibrating slightly as all matter does. It was locked and barred, I sensed the iron of the bar, metallic against my palate.
If I have learned one thing as a Preserver it is this: Strength does not matter. The will matters.
I gathered myself, stepped back, and kicked the door in.
A foul stench roiled out. I plunged into its depths, skipping down a set of sloping concrete stairs—my fist flashed and caught the mortal before he could even lift the gun. He flew back, hitting the wall with a sickening crack.