Hellforged

short, child.”

I plopped myself down and reached for the open book, thinking I’d rather be outside taking my chances with the Morfran again.

Mab pulled up a chair beside me as I studied the page. It was Pryce’s damn prophecy again. I was sick to death of hearing about my destiny to reunite the lines. I stared and stared, the letters blurring, but I didn’t get anything more than what I already knew: And shall thrice-tested Victory be conquered? First, the carrion-eater consumes living flesh. Second, a battle in the world between the worlds.

Third. The third test had to come next. What was it?

The next page showed an illustration I’d seen before, although I could have sworn it appeared earlier in the book—not that it mattered. Things seemed to move around inside this book as they pleased. Difethwr pointing at a hill, crows flying out of a square cave mouth. I focused on the picture; understanding didn’t always come through the text. Third …

I leaned forward.

Third, Victory falls …

An explosion of words blasted through my mind. Victory, tested, conquered, Morfran, falls, lady, Cerddorion, death. I tried to catch hold of the meanings, but it was like trying to grab individual snowflakes in a blizzard. The contents of the book flooded my consciousness—not word by word or phrase by phrase, but everything, all at once. My head screamed with noise and pain.

I tried to look away from the page, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move, couldn’t close my eyes. The illustration changed. Crows—thousands of them—poured from the cave. They darkened the sky. And they kept coming. They blacked out the picture, then the page. Still they kept coming, spilling onto the next page and obscuring its text. They flooded the pages to the very edges.

From the cacophony in my head, a single word emerged. Death. It pounded like a drumbeat: Death. Death, death, death, death, death.

I jumped up, knocking over the chair, and backed away. The screaming in my head grew louder. I screamed back to drown it out. Deathdeathdeathdeath. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands against my ears, trying to make it stop. Stop! Deathdeathdeathdeathdeath. I staggered a few steps, then fell to my knees. Deathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeath.

Abruptly, it ceased. I stopped screaming, too, my throat raw. My ears felt like they were bleeding.

“Vicky—can you hear me, child? Are you all right?” Mab was beside me, shouting, her hand on my shoulder. I sensed she’d been shouting for a while.

I put my hand on hers. “I’m okay,” I croaked. “Give me a minute.” I sat still, waiting for my heart to stop pounding. My mind felt dirty, like it had been smeared by a filthy rag. But it was quiet.

When I opened my eyes, I saw where I’d fallen. The one place in this room I’d avoided for ten years. I kneeled in the exact spot where my father had died. The outline of his body glowed faintly beneath me.

Death. Victory falls.

Mab tugged at my arm. “Can you get up?”

I nodded, shook off her help, and climbed shakily to my feet.

“Come sit by the fire. Tell me what happened.”

“The damn book hit me like a freight train, that’s what happened.” I sat in a wing chair. “When the picture changed—”

“Wait, child. Slow down. What do you mean, the picture changed? How?”

“You didn’t see it?”

She shook her head.

I told her what I’d experienced: how the whole book crammed itself into my head in a shrieking jumble, how the Morfran emerged from the cave and spread across the pages.

Mab jumped to her feet. “Pryce is making his move,” she said. “We have to stop him.” She paced in front of the fireplace. “There’s an abandoned slate mine about a hundred miles from here. It holds an enormous Morfran deposit. What you saw in the book, the way the illustration changed, tells me he’s on his way to release it. We must keep it contained.” She hurried across the room, calling for Jenkins. At the doorway, she turned back. “Be ready to leave in ten minutes.” She rushed into the hall.

Sitting in my chair beside the warm, cheerful fire, I shivered as a cold shadow passed over me. Yet I felt calm. The spot where my father had died no longer glowed. There was nothing to mark it but my memory.

Victory falls.

Death.

No ambiguity there. I’d try, and I’d fall in the attempt. I was going to join my father.

I was glad I hadn’t told Mab about the third test or how death had flooded my mind. There was no point in worrying her about my fate. Pryce said failure meant death, but some fates really were worse than death.

And if I was going to die today, I’d drag him to Hell with me.

I SPENT MY TEN MINUTES CHOOSING WEAPONS FROM MAB’S armory. I loaded up on bronze-bladed throwing knives—one went into a wrist sheath and two more into thigh sheaths—and a knuckle-duster trench knife for my belt. I wished I had the Sword of Saint Michael. But it was locked in my cabinet with the rest of my gear, two thousand miles away. A sword that size wasn’t practical for fighting in a narrow mineshaft, anyway, so I opted for a baselard, a Swiss short sword with an eighteen-inch blade.

I longed for a gun. I could’ve used an assault rifle or even a nice, compact nine-millimeter pistol. But Mab fought the old-fashioned way: with swords and knives and incantations. Fine for demons, but if Pryce was in his human form, it’d be a lot easier and surer to slow him down with a spray of bullets than with fancy sword work.

Selecting weapons felt good. It was something I knew how to do. If I was striving to be purely myself, maybe this was it. Preparing for battle, ready to step forward to protect those who needed it. Like Boston’s two thousand zombies.

That was one consolation. When I died, Pryce would lose his precious bridge between Uffern and the Ordinary. Mab wouldn’t let him get the critical Morfran mass he needed to attack the zombies without me. Even if I failed to kill him, my death would be a setback.

But I was going to kill him.

I met Mab in the front hall. Like me, she was bristling with knives. “I’ll carry Hellforged,” she said. She patted a sheath at her right hip. From there, she could easily draw the athame quickly with her left hand.

“Good idea. This isn’t a training exercise.” I took off the special ankle sheath and removed the athame. It was much calmer as I handled it, twitching only once or twice before I gave it to Mab. “Now that I have a free ankle, let me get another knife.”

“Don’t be long. Jenkins is bringing round the Land Rover.”

I went back to Mab’s weapons cabinet and chose a dagger, along with a regular ankle sheath, one without the strap over the top. When I was ready, I hurried toward the front door, almost colliding with Rose in the front hall.

“Oh, Miss Vicky. I was afraid you’d already gone. Here.” She thrust a basket at me. “It’s sandwiches and things. In case you get hungry.”

I hugged Rose and took the basket. “Come back safe,” she said.

If only she knew.

I walked outside, armed to the teeth and toting a picnic basket. Jenkins pulled the Land Rover into the coaching yard. The big vehicle crunched over the gravel and came to a stop at the front steps. Jenkins started to get out to do his chauffeur thing, but Mab marched to the car and got in the front passenger side. I was opening the door behind her when I noticed a movement in the driveway.

I shaded my eyes against the afternoon sun. A blue Mercedes, dust rising from its tires, drove into the coaching yard and stopped beside the Land Rover.

The driver’s door opened, and a man got out. A man with silver hair, broad shoulders, and a wolfish grin.