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“Because he couldn’t bring himself to trust us,” I said.
Tears streaked her face. “Don’t you care?”
“I don’t have time to care! Not if I want to save your life and rescue Vai.” Feeling helpless made me want to kick something. I kept thinking Amadou Barry was about to step into view from around the tower, but we were alone. “Why did the chain bring me here only to abandon us in this desert?”
“I believe this must be a puzzle,” said the cacica. “A piece that fits inside another piece. Just as the behiques of the Taino kingdom built fences to protect our lands, might not the lords of these spirit lands have built fences to close off their places of power? In the palace at Sharagua there are walls inside walls where only some have the privilege and power to enter, and others are forbidden. Could this tower be a gate onto such an inner and more sacred realm?”
“If it is, I don’t know how to cut a way through! Bee! That’s enough! We can cry later!”
After taking in a breath, she wiped her eyes. Her voice was a slobbery mess, but her words were clear. “The hammer wasn’t swept away.”
On shaking legs she rose holding the cacica’s head in one hand and Vai’s hammer in the other. She would have looked comical if she hadn’t worn red, puffy eyes and a mask of tragedy.
“Does no one listen to the wisdom of the elders?” asked the cacica. “Are young people taught nothing in these days? Are they all as disrespectful as that unpleasant young man? It is blood the maku spirit lords crave, and blood that feeds them. Life pulses in our blood. They who are without life will drink of the salt of our blood so they can mask themselves in the shape of the living. Blood will cut a gate that they wish to remain closed.”
Of course! What was I thinking? Blood cuts the gate.
Rory hissed. Wisps of clouds scudded our way. The earth stirred as if hidden carnivores were pushing up from underneath. Out on the plain a pack of lean wolves trotted into view. They would never stop trying to kill Bee.
I nicked my arm and smeared the dribble of blood on the wall. The blood bubbled, eating into the wall until the surface dissolved into a jumbled mass of translucent crystal. When I laid my shoulder into it, the substance crumbled away to form a crude tunnel, something like the gate I had cut in the Taino spirit fence.
“Go! Go!”
Rory and Bee pushed past me and vanished into a blaze of bright light. Salt stung my eyes and made the fresh cuts on my arm burn. Behind me an animal growled, and teeth snapped close by my feet. I flung myself toward the light, and slammed into stone hard enough that the impact momentarily stunned me.
A blowsy breath warmed my cheek. A tongue licked my closed eyes.
“Stop that!” I opened my eyes to find myself embracing a granite pillar about the height of a man. To my left rose a sapling oak. To my right shone a clear pool. We had crossed onto warded ground. Rory nudged me again, and I let go of the pillar.
“Cat! There you are! I thought we’d lost you!” Bee clutched me, her fingers digging into my already-raw cut. Her nose was red from weeping, but her eyes were shining in a belligerent way that boded ill. Yet she spoke in the charming voice she had used at the academy when she wanted to disarm and distract our teachers. “Look who I found, dearest!”
Blessed Tanit. The chain of binding had pulled me right to him.
Vai stood at a prudent remove, his arms crossed on his chest and his mouth set in a crooked line that made him look both annoyed and amused. The sight of him took my breath away.
“I’ve been telling him all about the lovely wedding journey Prince Caonabo and I took to the amiable Comanche nation,” Bee chattered on as I stared.
“Here you are, Cat. I knew you would come for me.”
His familiar voice pulled me out of my shock. He was wearing the clothes he had had on in the coach on Hallows’ Night. Seeing him so solid and so close hit me as hard as if I had been hammered. His skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes as a smile sharpened his face.
My lips parted. “Vai…”
“I was waiting for you,” he added in his silkiest voice.
Bee ground her heel into my instep. “And I told him all about the decorative little palace my darling Caonabo and I are building so it will be ready in time for the birth of our long-awaited and much-to-be-cherished child.”
Rory hissed, ears flicking back. Bee brandished the cacica’s head and the hammer.
I dumped my pack on the ground to leave myself room to maneuver as I confronted the man wearing Vai’s face. “You are not my husband. You are my sire. How did you know I was here?”
His laughter had a cruel edge. “I smell and hear and see and taste all. Your voice and your emotions are fingers walking along my skin. I knew you would come after him. Still, you have surprised me, Daughter. You have brought me the dragon dreamer. I did not expect you to hand her over in exchange for the man.”
“You are mistaken if you think I intend to let you have her.”
“That is what Tara Bell said to me when I told her she would bear a girl child who would grow up to serve me. Why do you bother to resist, when you know how that turned out?” In a melting flash of shadow he changed to become a saber-toothed cat larger and more powerful than Rory. He roared, the threat reverberating through the air.
“Stand behind me, Bee.” I raised my sword. There was a great deal I did not know about the spirit world, but what I did know, I could use. I spoke the words the footman who was an eru had taught me the first time I had crossed into the spirit world. “Let those who are kin come to my aid. I call to you, Rory’s kinswomen, and I ask respectfully for your protection.”
