Hellforged

Daniel clapped one of them on the shoulder. He turned and saw us approaching.

“You found her!” He hurried to us as the cops stood guard over Pryce.

As Daniel got near, Kane growled softly and pulled me closer. Daniel stopped, an eyebrow raised. Then he grinned. Even at night, his blue eyes sparkled.

“You okay?” he asked me.

I nodded. “What’s the situation with Pryce?”

“Alive. His eyes are open, but he’s unresponsive. We’ll know more after we get him to the hospital.” An ambulance pulled up to the cemetery gate. He glanced at it over his shoulder. “I’ll ride with the ambulance. I need to get to Mass General to check on someone, anyway.”

“Let us know how Norden’s doing,” I said. The guy had been in bad shape before the Morfran slammed into him and knocked over his gurney. I hoped he’d make it. Norden would never be one of my favorite people, but I was rooting for him to pull through.

“Nord—Oh, yeah. Yes, of course I will.” Daniel twisted around to see the ambulance. “You two don’t need to hang around,” he said. “I vouched for you, said you’d stop by the station tomorrow to make your statements.” Daniel nodded at Kane, businesslike. He shifted his gaze to me. His blue eyes held mine. Something gleamed there, then it was gone. He nodded at me, too. Then he turned and went to the ambulance.

Kane squeezed my shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

“In a minute.” I slipped out of his grasp and went, alone, to the place where Difethwr had fallen. On the human plane, there was no visible trace of the dead Hellion, only a faint, unpleasant smell, like the wind blowing the wrong way over a garbage dump.

Hellforged lay on the ground, glowing faintly silver. I touched its blade. Its vibration thrummed, feeling almost like a welcome. I picked up the dagger and stuck it in my belt. After a moment’s hesitation, I cracked open my senses the tiniest bit to the demon plane. The stench of rotting Hellion made me stagger back, and I slammed my senses shut. The smell receded. Okay, good, I could dip my big toe into Uffern without getting stuck there. Holding my breath, I opened again, fully this time, and Difethwr appeared, lying motionless on the ground. The Hellion was decomposing. Its blue skin, pitted with ragged holes, had turned purple mottled with filthy green, and the body collapsed on itself, like a balloon with a slow leak.

The Destroyer, destroyed. My mind flashed to my father, writhing on the floor, tormented and killed by this demon’s flames. It’s dead, Dad. After all these years, the Destroyer is dead.

I closed to the demon plane, and the Hellion disappeared. I drew Hellforged with my left hand and focused on a nearby slate gravestone. I couldn’t make out the name, but the date was 1704. Above the inscription was a carving, a simple line drawing of a winged skull. Flying death. Not exactly HOME SWEET HOME, but an appropriate residence for the Morfran.

As I traced wide circles above my head, there was very little drag on Hellforged. I circled and circled, mentally calling the Morfran to me, but the amount I sent into the gravestone was less than Pryce had released. I tried again, but this time nothing came. Some of the Morfran had escaped.

Well, there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. Mab said there was always some loose Morfran about, causing death and destruction. I’d never be able to catch all of it. Still, it bothered me that I’d let some get away. There was a little more violent, destructive hunger out there in the world now.

I sheathed Hellforged. Kane came over and stood beside me.

“Finally,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He held up his hand and sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”

I could smell lots of things. Blood—my own and others’—ashes, the lingering stench of demons, the rot of Difethwr’s decay. “Smell what?”

“Like a grave. An old one.”

“We’re in a three-hundred-year-old cemetery, Kane.”

“Yes, but—” He broke into a run, toward the spot where the two cops guarded Pryce. I was right behind him. When we got there, I didn’t see anyone.

Then I looked at the ground.

The two uniformed cops were bloodless husks—empty, discarded sacks of skin. And Pryce was gone.

40

I’D BARELY FALLEN ASLEEP WHEN A BLUE-AND-SILVER MIST churned the darkness. I let the lavender- scented cloud surround me. When it dispersed, there sat Mab in her wing chair by the fireplace. She leaned forward, worry lines etched into her forehead. “Thank heaven you’re all right,” she said. “I’ve been calling every half hour. Tell me what happened.”

I described everything since I’d left Maenllyd—the Glitch on the plane, falling asleep over the book, the Morfran attack on Tina, the carnage at the concert. “I wasn’t fast enough, Mab. Nine zombies died, probably more. Some are still missing.” Tina was okay. As soon as crows overspread the sky, she dived under the stage and hid there until the screaming stopped. Smart kid.

“Any death is regrettable, child. But nine as compared to what—nine hundred? More? Followed by untold suffering as Pryce led his Morfran-strengthened demons into the human realm. You did well.”

I mentally sawed a new notch in the kitchen table at Maenllyd.

“I don’t think we need to worry about Pryce for the time being. When you cut off Cysgod’s foot, you severed its connection to Pryce. Without his shadow demon, Pryce lacks animation and volition, like a human with no soul. That’s why he became catatonic.” Her voice grew thoughtful. “What does worry me is why the Old Ones spirited him away.”

The Old Ones again. I asked Mab what she knew about them.

“I’ve had … dealings with them before. A long time ago.”

“What are they? Some kind of vampire?” Although all the vampires I’d ever known would rather stake themselves than be that ugly.

“You could say that the Old Ones are to vampires as vampires are to humans. They use humans for food, but they’re so ancient they require little bodily sustenance. A single human every month or two—drained dry, like those poor policemen—takes care of an Old One’s physical needs. But they gorge on power, and that’s what they drain from vampires.”

I remembered Clyde’s description of Juliet’s robotic visitor. Wherever Juliet was, I hoped she was far away from any Old Ones.

“The Old Ones are a small, clannish group,” Mab continued. “They’ve remained hidden for centuries. They see integration of paranormals into human society as a threat to their own power structure. From what you tell me, they’ve quite successfully stopped your young man’s civil rights case.”

Your young man. When she said it, I became acutely aware, even in sleep, of Kane lying beside me. His strong arm curled around my waist, his warm breath puffed against my naked shoulder. I blushed, hoping Mab wouldn’t notice the blood rise in my face. I’d never had company before when I spoke with her on the dream phone.

My aunt averted her eyes—was that a smile?—and changed the subject. She told me about Jenkins’s plans for spring planting and how an unexpected busload of tourists had arrived at the Cross and Crow and overrun the village. It felt good to make small talk about normal things, the kinds of topics that come up in a just-saying-hi call.

Before we disconnected, I asked Mab about something that bothered me. “Pryce was wrong about the prophecy. It wasn’t about reuniting the two lines through the birth of a child; it was about uniting Hellions and the Cerddorion through my bond with the Destroyer.”

“Yes, child. I did advise you against glomming onto any one meaning.”

“But Pryce believed it. That means the book tricked him, too. Why would it do that? They’re on the same side.”

“Perhaps it didn’t. Pryce has always been arrogant. He may have grown too attached to the meaning he preferred, building up a scaffolding of interpretation to support it. He blinded himself to other possibilities.”