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“I assume Karvanak wants the fourth spirit seal.”
“He wants a little more than that. He also demanded that we hand over Vanzir. If we don’t, he’ll sell Chase to the Sub Realms, into slavery.” All of my anger at Chase vanished in a sea of worry. I broke down, lowering my head to the table as the stinging salt of tears washed over my face. “I can’t let anything happen to him. I . . . I . . .”
Camille rested her hand on my shoulder. “You love him, even if you are mad at him.” As I nodded, she rubbed my back, and Iris hurried to fetch me more tea. How the hell were we supposed to handle this? Unable to keep up pretenses any longer, I gave in to my fear and wept until there were no more tears to come.
CHAPTER 22
As soon as dusk hit, we gathered around the table. We’d managed to clean up most of the mess, though the house looked a lot more empty than it had that morning when we left. Most of our knickknacks were gone, and some of the furniture had been destroyed.
We’d already sent Morio through Grandmother Coyote’s portal to Elqaneve, to tell them we needed a new Whispering Mirror. He returned a couple of hours later with the promise that we’d have one before the week was out.
Now, Smoky and Morio sat on one side with Camille. Zach and I sat opposite them. Menolly parked herself at the head of the table, while Iris and Roz took the other end.
Menolly had instructed Luke—a werewolf who was her head bartender at the Wayfarer—to take over for the night. I’d asked Vanzir to join us a little later. We needed to discuss matters before telling the dream chaser he was technically part of Chase’s ransom. No telling what he might do once he found out that Karvanak had plans for him, and they probably didn’t involve a welcome-home party. Not that I intended to hand him over. He knew too much about us and our operations by now.
“What do we do? We can’t give him the spirit seal. For one thing, we already handed it over to Queen Asteria. Even if we did still have it, we couldn’t trade it. Not even to save Chase.” Camille had a strained look on her face. We all did.
I stared at my glass of milk. “I know. If we start making deals with them, we might as well just throw open the portals and invite Shadow Wing to go all Godzilla on us.” Logic tasted bitter in my mouth, but there it was—the bottom line. Even if Karvanak had kidnapped Iris, we wouldn’t trade the seals for her. And I wasn’t about to hand over Vanzir, either. Terrorism thrived on positive results, and if we gave in now, we’d be admitting defeat.
“Collateral damage,” Menolly said. “That’s what it comes down to. It’s easy to say no to striking a bargain when the victims are nameless. But when the bodies take on the faces of friends, that’s when we’re forced to make hard choices.” She glanced over at Camille. “Like I had to with Erin.”
“Erin . . .” I said. “You’re right. She was targeted because of us, too.”
Erin Mathews was the owner of the Scarlet Harlot, a lingerie shop Camille frequented. She was also president of the local Faerie Watchers Club, a nationwide group of Fae groupies. Members traded pictures, autographs, asked various Fae in to speak at their meetings, and generally were a harmless, enthusiastic bunch.
When Camille had befriended Erin, we had no idea it would turn out so badly. A few months back, when Menolly’s sire had come to town to raise hell, he targeted the human woman, solely because she was our friend, and he knew that hurting her would hurt us.
He’d meant to turn Erin and use her against us, but we had gotten to her first. We couldn’t save her life. But we found her in time for Menolly to offer Erin the chance to walk among the undead. Instead of a mass-murderer for a sire, Erin now called Menolly “Mother,” and Menolly was now spending a lot of time helping her “daughter” adjust to life on the flip side.
“I fear we’re going to see more of this as the battle for control over the portals continues. And with the new portals cropping up randomly as the grid breaks down . . . we’re in for a rough time of it,” Morio said. “We have to come to grips with the fact that we’re walking in the fire now, and fire burns.”
Camille let out a long sigh. “He’s right. This isn’t the worst of it. Having said that, what can we do about Chase? Obviously, we can’t give them the seal. And we can’t hand over Vanzir, either. So how do we save him?”
“Find Karvanak, and we find Chase. We have to kill the RÄksasa this time. He’ll be on us like white on rice if we don’t, and he won’t stop till we’re dead.” I slammed my hand on the table. “Why didn’t we take him out after he stole the seal? We just skirted him, hoping he’d go away.”
“We’ve been busy,” Iris said. “And once he stole the third seal, he wasn’t an immediate threat anymore. You know full well that before we even thought about getting near him again, we had to bind Vanzir with the Subjugation Ritual. And that took a lot of energy and time, if you remember.”
I sucked back a retort. Iris had worn herself out performing the ritual. Even with Morio and Camille acting as her seconds, it had taken every ounce of energy the Talon-haltija had in order to control the collar of subjugation.
The symbiotic creatures that formed the collars came lumbering in from the astral realm, summoned by force and won over by bribery. They would only agree to act as an agent for subjugation after offerings of blood had been made from all who would wield the whip of the master. Which meant the four of us—Iris, Menolly, Camille, and I—had spent two weeks siphoning off enough of our blood to fill a quart jar before we could even summon the creature. Iris had fasted during that time, which made it even more difficult on the sprite.
During the ritual, the creature, which looked like a translucent eel, swelled thick and fat on our blood, then slithered toward Vanzir’s neck, ready to form the living chain of energy beneath his skin that would forever bind him to us.
As it bit into his flesh, he winced, but the manacles holding him down were strong, and he forced himself to relax. The ritual went against every bone in his body, but he seemed determined to go through with it. I was relieved. Our only other option would be to kill him. We couldn’t let him go.
As the soul binder wriggled to enlarge the opening it had severed in Vanzir’s neck, my stomach churned. And as the astral parasite began to burrow into muscle, I had to force myself to maintain control and not go running out of the room. But I managed to stand vigil with my sisters and Iris.
By the time the tip of its tail had almost disappeared, I could see the head had worked its way around his neck, a few layers beneath the skin. The soul binder’s teeth broke through directly opposite the original bite, grabbed hold of its tail like an ouroboros, and then settled deep into the muscle as the skin quickly began to heal over the two narrow slits.
Iris began the chant to forever merge the soul binder and Vanzir. The chant would bind both of them to us. Once again, it felt like we were headed on a one-way trip, deeper into the rabbit hole.
There is no spoon, I thought as the grisly ritual played itself out. Everything was an illusion. It had to be, or I didn’t want to be here. And yet . . . and yet . . . from where we stood, everything was terribly, horribly real.
And then it was over, and Vanzir was our slave. He would live or die by our whims. We were his masters. One more hat I didn’t want to wear. One more title I didn’t want tacked onto my name. But there it was, and here we were, chained to a demon by a blood ritual as old as the demons themselves.
“We should be able to locate Karvanak,” Rozurial said. “And quite possibly, we can rescue Chase from him. But won’t the RÄksasa be expecting us? You can’t fault the dude on intelligence. I agree with Smoky. He was here, looking for more insurance. I’ll bet you anything the demon figured there’s no way in hell you’d back out of the deal if he had Iris or Maggie. Or both.”
“Cripes,” Camille said. “I bet you’re right.”
