But it had been watching me.
All this time, through countless hooded eyes. Pressing close to me, sleeping beside me in Chester’s, monitoring my every move. And when I’d killed its minions, it had simply dispatched more. Always watching. Until the Book made me invisible and the collector had apparently lost the ability to keep track of me.
I snatched a hasty glance at my hand, fearing the worst. But no, I was still visible. Then why hadn’t they noticed me?
“Does it have a name?” I wanted something concrete to call my unknown enemy. Something to research, ask around about. Ryodan had once said my ghouls had attended the Unseelie king in his private quarters. Now I knew why. They’d scouted him, too, in a time long past.
Sweeper.
A simple word but I had sudden chills at the base of my spine. I’d heard it before. The Dreamy-Eyed Guy, one of the Unseelie king’s many skins, had recently said, “?’Ware the Sweeper, BG. Don’t talk to its minions either.” The damn king had known all along I was being hunted by it. And that was all the warning he gave me?
“I really hate the Unseelie king,” I muttered.
You are.
“Am not,” I groused. I’d laid that to rest. I might have been contaminated by the peculiar half-mad being but I wasn’t him.
Were you not, you would not fly.
“Tell me about the Sweeper,” I said. “Tell me everything.”
It said nothing.
“Have you seen it?”
The Hunter moved its great head from side to side, mouth open, straining wind through its teeth.
“Do you know anyone who knows more about it?”
Perhaps the one that inhaled the child.
“K’Vruck!”
It rumbled again, laughing at me. Name this. Name that.
“Do you know where K’Vruck is?”
Nightwindflyhighfree.
“Could you find him?”
I do not hunt for you. Not-king.
I sighed. “If you see him, will you tell him I’m looking for him?”
Again there was no reply. I made a mental note to be more circumspect in the future about telling the Hunters I wasn’t the king. If they sensed something in me, they accorded respect, I wanted that respect. And cooperation.
I leaned forward over the Hunter’s back. Something had just caught my eye, a thing I couldn’t believe we’d forgotten.
“Fly low and land there.” I pointed to the center of the city’s largest Dark Zone.
Months ago, V’lane/Cruce had rebuilt the dolmen at 1247 LaRuhe in order to help the Keltar free Christian from the Unseelie prison. And there it stood, towering and ominous, behind the uncharacteristically formal house, smack in the middle of the crater left when Cruce had destroyed the warehouse it once occupied. The Highlanders had either neglected to dismantle the stone gate to the prison when they were done with it, or it had been rebuilt again.
I shivered. I’d walked the Unseelie prison. It hadn’t been empty. There’d been things lurking in blue-black crevices, terrible things that hadn’t ventured forth despite having been granted their freedom.
All portals between my world and Faery: bad.
And if I were successful, I’d have the Hunter fly me to the abbey, where I’d knock down those stones, too. Perhaps I’d be able to convince my ride to assist, lend a massive wing or perhaps char them with its smoky breath.
Nor do I perform tricks for you, it said in my mind.
The Hunter touched down in a wide intersection, flapping debris into funnel clouds with its giant leathery wings, showering the cobbled streets with black ice.
“Stay here until I get back.” I stripped off the gloves I was wearing, checked to make sure my spear was tucked into the makeshift holster I’d created with my scarf, and hurried down the street toward what had once been the Lord Master’s house.
—
The estate at 1247 LaRuhe was exactly the same as it had been last time I saw it, extravagant, forgotten, and as out of place in the casually dilapidated, industrial neighborhood as slender Kat had looked in powerful, forbidding Kasteo’s subterranean gym.
The first time I’d come here, I was following my sister’s last clue, chiseled as she lay dying. I believed it would lead me to the Book she’d wanted me to find, and instead discovered her boyfriend, learned he was the Big Bad ushering Unseelie into our world, and was nearly killed by one of his bloodthirsty companions. Six months later, I’d visited the house again, because Darroc had taken my parents captive and I was hell-bent on freeing them.
It hadn’t gone as planned, but few of my ventures in this city had.
Today my plan was simple.
I would skirt the house and head straight for the giant stones of the dolmen to see if my Unseelie-flesh-enhanced strength was considerable enough that, with a chain or rope purloined from a nearby building, I might be able to send the whole thing crashing to the ground.
Or perhaps I’d find one of those little bobcats in a nearby warehouse I could use to push it over. I could drive anything if there was gas in it.