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"Yes, apparently." Uthe looked down at the twisted corpse, anger and pride surging through him. "Though it didn't come from her. The message to me may have been intercepted, or the demon was monitoring her progress another way. She would have killed herself before giving them anything. She was much like her ancestor, Haris."
"A demon at large is a concern to far more than the human race or even one vampire." Keldwyn shifted to glance out the entranceway, then brought his attention back to Uthe, his dark eyes intent. "Did you not think to seek other help?"
"All involved with it were sworn to secrecy, my lord. You know as I do what element is attracted to a power source like this. Containing the demon itself has often been an overwhelming effort. If news of it had gone beyond us..."
Keldwyn frowned. "Yet it can compel weaker minds. Why would it not have made itself known to those with evil intent that way?"
"As I said, it can only compel those minds, not identify itself to them. And even if it could, the demon does not reside in this realm. It is beyond the reach of those with malevolent purpose."
Awareness dawned on Keldwyn's face. "The Shattered World. That is what you have imprisoned in the Shattered World. And Reghan suggested this?"
"Reghan and Shahnaz."
The Fae Lord digested that. "It makes sense. Magwel was in line for the Unseelie throne, and had the ear of the Queen then. He could have asked her help to open a portal there. Since that was before he and Magwel dissolved their relationship, she would have agreed with little explanation."
"Yes."
"Why worry about a weapon to send it back to a place it escaped once before? Why not leave it in the Shattered World for all eternity?"
"Because there is more to it." Uthe held Keldwyn's gaze. "I would prefer to explain further after I attend to Fatima, my lord. Please."
"I tire of waiting for the full picture, Lord Uthe," the Fae said, an edge to his voice. "It feels like you are deliberately keeping me ignorant to serve other purposes."
"I swore a blood oath never to speak of this to anyone but those who had to know to achieve God's will." Uthe rose to his feet, faced him. "I have always had to weigh carefully who I tell of this, never blurt things out hastily that cannot be retrieved. Yet you now know more than anyone alive, except myself. Draw your own conclusions from that, my lord, when I ask you for patience."
"I've never known you to blurt out anything, my lord." Keldwyn's expression eased some. "I believe current circumstances suggest I am now part of those who need to know."
"Yes. I agree. It makes sense to me that someone with your intelligence and power would be sent my way now, when the integrity of my own mind is degrading." Uthe forced out the words, though the last one caught in his throat. "Yet I will be frank, my lord. I do not know your full motives for coming on this quest with me, but I know you serve both the Unseelie and Seelie Fae royalty. I have had one task to honor above all others. This noble woman died for it, and she was not the first. No matter how much my heart wants to trust you, the mind and heart are intertwined. If I cannot trust the integrity of my mind, I will not fail after all these years because your attentions make me wish for things I have set aside. I must be certain I can trust you, and for that I need your faith. I need your trust."
Uthe paused. He hadn't realized all those thoughts had been there, just waiting to be said, building up throughout their journey together, and that journey had only just begun. Keldwyn was staring at him with an unreadable expression. Uthe inclined his head and spoke stiffly. "I am going to prepare her body now. Do as you will."
Taking the blanket from her cot, which still smelled like her body despite the less pleasant scents saturating the chamber, he wrapped her up in it, and lifted her tenderly in his arms. So light and small. Humans seemed fragile as birds when they died. Even some of his fellow Templars in full mail had felt that way to him when he carried them from the field.
He left the chamber, moving back into the warren of tunnels. One led to the water source, a trickle through the rocks that splashed into a pool no bigger than a bucket. Laying her down on the floor of the cavern, he removed her torn and bloody clothes. She had a stack of wash cloths and towels back here, and he doused one in the water, using it to clean her. Then he wrapped her in the silk. Sitting back on his heels, he gazed at her once more, seeing the strength of her features despite the decomposition.
It was rare for a vampire to be known to one family through so many generations. He'd seen the physical and personality traits Haris and Shahnaz possessed resurface or meld with the features of each successor who took on the mantle of magic and the responsibility of adding to their knowledge. Whatever Fatima had discovered had been built on their dedication.
In her younger days, Fatima had been a nearly perfect physical replica of Shahnaz. It was as if, after a certain number of cycles, the genetics returned in full force. In Fatima's flawless features, he was able to see what Shahnaz's beauty would have been unmarred. It was not the only way the two women were similar. Shahnaz had made the first major breakthrough with the demon.
When they'd unearthed the demon's container under Solomon's Temple, they'd found the binding on the vessel had an imminent expiration date. Up until then, Uthe had questioned the wisdom of removing the demon from where he'd been hidden, but that had suggested the discovery had God's favor.
Shahnaz had found a way to contain the spirit indefinitely. Relics had been useful to the binding, but finding a way to lock them to the demon and ensure the prison could not be breached as the years progressed had required magic of an extraordinary complexity. "Binding something so a smart person can't figure out how to unlock it is difficult, but not impossible. Finding a way to protect something from random chance and dumb luck is the true challenge."
He smiled. He'd heard computer experts say something similar about hacking. Appropriate, since technology had always seemed like magic to him. Shahnaz had at last found the right combination of spell craft, but it had nearly come too late. As the demon was breaking free from his older, weakened bindings, she'd shouted the right words and laid the architecture of his new prison. It pulled him back into captivity--barely.
He'd visited her shortly after it had happened. She'd looked as if she'd aged fifteen years, and he'd seen her only a year ago. Yet the close call with the demon didn't matter to her. She brushed aside his concern, having more important things to tell him. For years she'd lived with the demon's daily threats that it would break free and do unspeakable horrors to her, so Uthe guessed the threat nearly becoming reality hadn't been enough to rattle her. She only wanted to talk to him about one thing.
The angel who'd shown up on her doorstep right afterwards.
* * *
"You expect them to come down in a blaze of light and clouds, with wings gilded by a heavenly glow." She unwrapped a sweetmeat and offered it to him. When he declined, she gave him a cup of tea instead and sat on a cushion, her feet drawn up as she rocked on the point of her buttocks. She preferred to wear loose cotton pants with a tunic over it, a man's clothes, and she kept her hair hacked short. Though her face was a tragedy, she had a curvaceous body any man might desire. She stayed cognizant of that, though her reputation as a witch woman kept most at bay except those who needed her healing tonics. She lived in France, in a stone cottage in the forest, near the village of La Couvertoirade.
"He showed up outside my door a day after it had happened.
I thought a flock of birds had landed, and when I looked, his wings were folding up along his back. The eyes he turned upon me, they had no whites, my lord. His power was fearsome, overwhelming, but he was not unkind. He told me that he came to claim the demon, to destroy its container and send him back to Hell. Apparently when the binding faltered, enough energy from the demon had escaped to alert the heavens of the potential imbalance. Can you imagine? At first I got so excited, for all these years we thought we were facing this alone, but here was a potential ally of unspeakable power."
She rolled her eyes, looking so much like a fishwife at her wit's end with her husband that Uthe almost grinned, despite the seriousness of it all. "But I should have remembered that the gods, by whatever name we call Them, have their own agenda."
She pushed up the tunic, showed him an arm that had been burned to the bone. "I was still unsettled by this, else I would have known better. And the bastard gave me these white streaks of hair." She ran a hand through the short crop, ruffling it. "The demon, not the angel."
"You should have called me, Shahnaz."
"To what end?" She eyed him. "You are a powerful vampire, my lord, but you are no magic user. There is risk in what we do here, we know it."
"I meant to help with this decision, with the angel."
She shook her head. "The binding has been perfected, Lord Uthe. Thanks to your connection to Lord Reghan, we've secured a place to put the demon and the relics guarding it, far beyond the reach of man. Beyond the reach of any but yourself, really. Foolproof, since fools are the cleverest among us."
"You said the angel was going to take it."
"Yes. But I convinced him the sacrifice was too great." Shahnaz's eyes grew serious, and she closed both hands over one of Uthe's. "We cannot vanquish the demon at the expense of the others who share his prison. Giving him that victory would fuel evil in a way that would be worse than unleashing the demon upon the world. That was the argument I made with the angel."
