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“Exactly. It isn’t merely casting a spell; the ones designed for weapons have to last, have to be bound to something portable, and have to be stable enough not to blo
w up in your face. The Black Circle likely has spellbinders working for them, but not enough for a major war. They needed outside sources.”
Kathy nodded. “Somebody must have figured out that the PPDs use the same spells as the more powerful stuff, so you don’t need a spellbinder. You just need the magic to . . . plump them up.”
“It all makes sense,” Radu agreed.
“It makes no kind of sense!” That, of course, was Marlowe. “Those weapons weren’t merely ‘plumped up’! They were like nothing I’ve ever seen. Each spell felt like it had the combined force of a hundred mages behind it—and there were cases of them! No one has that much magic—not the Black Circle, and certainly not a bunch of slavers. So how the devil are they doing it?”
Nobody said anything.
But I suddenly remembered what I’d realized earlier, in that brief moment of clarity. Dorina had shown me that vampire remains could be hugely powerful, but it was almost impossible to get them anymore. But there was another magical creature that was dying in quantity, and that nobody seemed to care about.
“They’re using fey bones,” I told them, and passed out.
Chapter Forty-four
Something was wrong.
I awoke in a strange bed, with a strange vampire. I had a hand on his throat before I recognized him: the powerful master from the fight. The one my twin liked.
He was in a healing trance, his many wounds bandaged but still radiating heat. Yet he was not insensate. His kind retain a low level of awareness in that state, so he knew I was there.
Yet he never so much as stirred, even with my nails digging into his flesh.
I slowly removed them; he wasn’t the source of the danger.
But something was.
I glanced around.
There was no one else here, but there had been. The room was full of scent puddles, some distant in time, days old. Servants, likely, in to clean and then out again, quickly enough that their presence barely registered. Others were brighter. Like my Sire’s, his scent unmistakable: dark, rich, and deep. Part of it clung to my hairline, where he’d pushed some damp strands away. It was an hour old, perhaps two.
I sat up.
The brightest scent in the room was around a chair beside the bed. A woman—a healer, judging by the faint traces of herbs and tinctures—had sat there for some time, and possibly fallen asleep watching over her charges. She’d definitely been the one to bandage the vampire; none of his kind would have bothered. He couldn’t get infections, and he’d heal himself soon enough, something I supposed she hadn’t known.
She’d bandaged me, as well.
Too well.
Mummy, I thought, glimpsing myself in a mirror. The comment came from my still-asleep twin. She thought we looked amusing, like a bikini-wearing mummy, the undergarments almost obscured by bandages and tape.
I didn’t care what we looked like.
I cared about the niggle at the back of my mind. Something familiar, but that I couldn’t quite place. Something wrong.
There was a door across from the bed. I walked over and opened it. No one was outside, not a single guard, which seemed unwise. Did no one here know what I was, what I could do?
But all I saw was an empty hall, and all I smelled was woodsmoke and alcohol. I followed the scents down the corridor, to where it let out into a sitting area. It was mahogany paneled and dimly lit, mostly by the flickering light of a low-burning fire. A small group had gathered around it, including two humans. I automatically synced my heartbeat with that of one of them, but may as well not have bothered. They were too caught up in their conversation to pay me any attention.
And too secure.
Because this place . . . what was this place?
The terrible fog in my head caused by the stun spell had cleared, allowing me to access my abilities again. But what they were telling me seemed impossible. I tried to contact my twin’s mind, but she was too deeply asleep, and batted away the request. It didn’t matter; I was already reaching out, in something like awe, my mind encountering what felt like every vampire on Earth. I brushed mind after mind, all crowded into one place, like a working anthill. And at the center of it all—
The queen.
