fire drake flew by he crouched and leapt upward a dozen feet to snatch it by the throat with both hands. The demon boy dragged the fire drake from the sky, fell to the roof on top of it, and roared with pleasure as its flames licked at his legs and arms and torso.
He slid his hands into its gullet and broke its jaws, tearing its head in two. It felt incredible. It felt good.
In fact, Danny was terrified to discover exactly how good it felt to kill.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ceridwen burns with fever. There is a cool breeze in the trees above, but it offers no comfort. The water diverted from the river into the stone bath is icy cold, flowing down from the mountain, and she can feel it sting her skin, yet her blue-tinted flesh is now flushed with a rich pink, so that her naked body seems painted with the colors of sunset.
That is not right. No, not at all. Her skin should not look like that. She is ill. So very ill.
Her eyelids flutter and she lolls back into the stone basin, the water flowing over her bare flesh. Her nakedness concerns her not at all. She is still young. It will be some time before she has blossomed enough for the men of the Fey to notice her. She is old enough that she has begun to notice the boys, but even so, there will be no intruders here. This is the citadel of her uncle, King Finvarra. Ceridwen's room is nearby. And her mother -
Mother, she thinks.
As if summoned, her mother leans into her view, her smile, her concerned eyes, blotting out the sky. The woman's features are severe, her hair cropped closely to her scalp, but there is a gentleness in her as she gazes down upon her daughter that most others will never see.
'Ceridwen. The fever has touched you. But do not fear. I will remain with you, here at your side, until it has passed.'
A calm passes through her. The fever still burns. Her bones ache, her eyes are seared, her throat is swollen near to closing, her breath rattles in her chest. But her mother is with her. Ceridwen lets her eyes flutter closed as a soothing hand begins to brush her damp hair away from her face. Her mother's touch caresses her cheek and the agony of the fever recedes just slightly. For the first time, Ceridwen feels as though the icy water in the stone bath is cooling her, its chill sinking into her flesh, and the blazing fever abating.
Her chest rises and falls in steady rhythm and she searches for a peaceful place within… only to discover that she is already there. She can hear the breeze in the trees, the rush of the river, and the song of birds, and yet they are all distant compared to the beat of her heart, the sound of her breathing. She is deep within herself.
The stone bath is rough against her back. The water envelops her, flowing over her, and its sting disappears.
'Impressive.'
Alarmed, Ceridwen opens her eyes and stares incredulously at the man standing over her. He has dark skin and hair as black as raven's feathers. His chin is covered by a short beard, and he peers down at her with eyes the blue of the deepest, most tumultuous river.
Confusion takes hold of her. Where is her mother? Who is this stranger, this intruder into the King's citadel? She glances down at herself, at her body, and sees that she had is in full blossom, her body ripened to an age where men might do more than appreciate her. In her shame she tries to cover herself, and the pain sears through her again. Her skin is blistering with the fever, her breathing ragged.
Ceridwen frowns. There is no fever. Somehow she knows this.
'I was not speaking of your charms, Lady, significant as they are,' the dark man says, gesturing toward her bare breasts. 'I refer to your endurance. I always admired you, Ceridwen. Now I see my interest was well placed.'
'Who are you?' she manages to rasp.
The water in the stone bath is no longer cold. It seems, in fact, near to boiling.
'Don't you know?' His smile is thin, a surface thing, so fleeting, hurried away by the grimness of his nature.
And she does know. 'Sanguedolce. Sweetblood.'
He executes a courtly bow. 'Indeed.' The twinkle in his eye lasts only a moment. 'The damage is done, now. The evil, the darkness… it will come no matter what you do. I should let you all die for your part in this foolishness. But there may come a time when I need you. So a word of advice, sorceress.
'You are a channel, a conduit. She's using you to tap my power. Your pain is that you are fighting it. Stop fighting. Take some for yourself.'
Sanguedolce crouches at her side. He bends to kiss her. His lips are soft, but hers are dry and cracked and they burn.
Not with fever, but magick.
'Wake up,' he whispers.
Ceridwen woke hissing air in through her teeth, filling her lungs hungrily, and a part of her knew that she had momentarily ceased to breathe. Her eyes opened wide and though the light inside Conan Doyle's defunct ballroom was brilliant, she did not turn from it. Her teeth gritted, the pain in her back and neck and down her legs excruciating. Blisters burst as she moved. Shards of the chrysalis beneath her cut her skin.
It was striped with cracks, fissures through which the mage's magick spilled. Morrigan's ritual had locked the two together, married Ceridwen's flesh to Sanguedolce's crystal sarcophagus. The agony had blinded her, shut down her mind. But now there was the pinpoint spark of knowledge in Ceridwen's head. She could feel more than pain. In the magick that seared her, that burst from her flesh and raced through her veins, she could feel power.
She could taste it.
Like bile, it rose in her throat again. Previously she had let her jaws gape and vomited up that power, that magick.
This time she clamped her mouth shut with a clack of teeth. Her lips curled back and she sneered. The magick surged up within her.
But Ceridwen did not let it go. She caught it. Take some for yourself, Sanguedolce had said in her fever dream. And so she did.
The face of her mother was clear in her mind. The sound of the river that rushed down from the mountain citadel of her uncle, King Finvarra, in the heart of Faerie, was in her ears. She brought both memories into her heart. Words in the ancient tongue of the Kings of Faerie formed silently upon her lips and her pain receded. Her flesh healed. The magick of Sweetblood the Mage spilled into her, just as it had before. But Ceridwen was no longer the conduit.
She was the vessel.
With a sneer, she broke her bonds and sprang up from the chrysalis. It popped with the sound of ice breaking on the lake in springtime, and the fissures deepened and widened. She could see Sanguedolce's face deep within the amber encasement. His eyes were still, and yet she was sure he was watching her.
Tensed to defend herself, she found that Morrigan had not even noticed her. The cunning bitch was on her knees in front of a shimmering portal, a slit in reality. Even as Ceridwen took it all in, realizing what it was, she saw a tall, lithe silhouette reach the dimensional doorway from the other side. Cloaked in clouds of gray, it put one foot through, into this world.
The Nimble Man, Ceridwen thought, her heart racing with panic, her mind whispering the doom of all creation. But she would not have it. With Sweetblood's power coursing through her, she held out a hand and in an instant, a sphere of ice coalesced in her palm. A finger pointed at the floor, she summoned the spirits of the wood, and in the space between heartbeats a new staff grew up and into her free hand. Its tip spread into fingers to receive the ice sphere, she set it into place and blue-white mist began to swirl around the orb. Then a tiny spark ignited within, becoming an ember, becoming a flame. It started to glow.
Morrigan had taken or destroyed her elemental staff. Ceridwen had created another.
As the elemental magick pulsed from the staff, Morrigan seemed to sense it. She twitched, obviously
