Boston.
Hampson had to be feeling a lot of pressure from his Humans First buddies to use these murders to advance the cause. But his focus on Deadtown was ridiculously shortsighted. “So while the cops and the National Guard tighten the noose around Deadtown,” I said, “the Reaper will get on with his work behind their backs.”
“Like I said, I’ll do what I can.” Tension strained his voice. “And Vicky, I’m not kidding. I know what you’re like—stay away from this. Don’t try to sneak out of Deadtown. Don’t try to catch this guy yourself. Let the police handle it.” He hung up, making sure he got the final word.
I WAS OUT FOR HALF AN HOUR GETTING THE KEYS FOR Kane’s D.C. place and delivering them to Carlos. When I got home, I heard Mab moving around in the bedroom and went to see how she was doing. I knocked on the door and pushed it open. The creature who sat on the edge of the bed barely resembled my aunt. She looked like a wizened gnome, or one of those preserved bodies that archeologists dug up from peat bogs. Her gray hair had thinned; I could see her scalp through it. Her feet dangled over the side of my bed, not touching the floor.
“I’m afraid I need some help getting to the lavatory.”
I lifted her to her feet. Mab was normally a couple of inches taller than my five foot six, but she’d shrunken so much she barely came up to my shoulder. Although she leaned heavily against me as we crossed the hall to the bathroom, I barely felt her weight.
When I returned her to bed, she patted the mattress. “Sit, child.”
“Can I get you anything first? A cup of tea?”
“I’m past any need or desire for nourishment.” She patted the bed again. “Come, sit close. I can barely see you. Give me your hand, child.”
I sat and took her hand. Mab had said that, without the bloodstone, her body would rapidly catch up with her true age. But she looked older than any living person I’d ever seen. “Mab, how old are you?”
“In this lifetime? A shade over three hundred years.” Most of the Cerddorion lived human-length lifespans, but Mab had told me once that some of our kind live much longer. And with the bloodstone, perhaps she’d pushed the limit even further. “You probably think I’m no different from the Old Ones, trying to live forever. It’s not that, child. I’ve had to hold on; I’ve waited so long for my successor.” She gave my hand a squeeze. “There have been many apprentices over the years, many fine demon fighters. But always I waited for Victory.”
This speech sounded way too much like she was getting ready to say good-bye, to pass her demon-fighting mantle to me. Gently, I released her hand. “I’m not ready to be your successor.”
“Not yet, it’s true. There is much you need to learn, and I still hope to be the one to teach you. I haven’t given up, child. Not when there’s a chance we can retrieve the bloodstone.” That was good to hear. It sounded more like the Mab I knew. “Still, when one looks back over the past, there are things one feels the need to explain.”
I thought about the twenty-year-old misunderstanding between her and Gwen, who’d never accept any explanation other than what she’d seen with her own horrified eyes. But nothing like that stood between Mab and me.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“Yes, I do. I want you to understand what’s behind my feud with Myrddin.”
I hadn’t wanted to tire Mab out with my questions about that. But now she wanted to talk. “Were you Nimue?”
She shook her head. “Nimue was my sister.” Her face looked sadder than I’d ever seen it. “Myrddin killed her.”
For a long moment, neither of us said anything. Mab’s murky eyes went distant, and she held out a hand, as though reaching across time. I folded my hand around hers, and she turned to me.
“What happened, Mab?”
“In that lifetime, I was Viviane.”
“The Lady of the Lake.” I recalled the white-sleeved arm that rose from my dream-lake to hand me the bloodstone. Mab had taken that form in my dreamscape.
She nodded. “It was all so long ago. Several lifetimes, and my lives are long. I was a demon fighter and priestess of Ceridwen. Not much different from how you know me, although I was much, much younger.” Her voice softened. “So very young. I was eighteen, Nimue was all of sixteen. We’d heard rumors of a handsome, mysterious man who lived in the woods. Being silly girls, we went to find him. We wanted an adventure, but there was no challenge to it. Myrddin meant for us to find him.” She glanced at me sidelong. “And handsome he was indeed. His teeth were better then.”
I could believe that. A millennium or two without dental care would take its toll.
“Myrddin charmed us. He flattered and entertained us. And he tried to seduce me. You see, what he really wanted was a son.” Demi-demons have a very low rate of reproduction—most of their females are barren, and when they do manage to conceive and carry to term, the death rate for infants is high. Myrddin must have felt he’d have a better chance of success with a Cerddorion female.
“I resisted. I was a shapeshifter and a demonslayer; I didn’t want to risk having a child. He tried to ensnare me with magic, but I could feel the tendrils of his spell. I refused to see him anymore. I forbade Nimue from going anywhere near him.” She sighed deeply. “But my sister was sixteen and thought she was in love.”
“He got Nimue pregnant.”
“She trusted him, and he used her, not caring how it might hurt her.” She scowled. “The pregnancy tore her apart from the inside. How she cried from the sheer pain of it. The baby clawed at her, she said; it burned her. I tried to give her herbs that would end the pregnancy, but she wouldn’t take them. She ran away to be with Myrddin, to give him his son. She said she wanted them to be a family.” Her voice caught in a tearless sob. “For weeks, I searched for her.”
“Did you find her?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.
“I found her corpse. Myrddin had ripped the child from her womb and left her to bleed to death on the ground.” Mab rocked back and forth, moaning softly, as if she’d just this minute discovered her sister’s mutilated body. But then she straightened. “I vowed to make him pay for what he’d done.”
Mab lifted her chin, and a defiant pride showed in her face. “I shifted my shape to become the exact image of Nimue. Not as she died, but as she looked when Myrddin first saw her. In that shape, I entered Myrddin’s dreams. Do you know what happens when a beautiful young girl enters a man’s dreams?” She smiled. “She gets whatever she wants.”
“So that’s why the legends say Nimue stole Myrddin’s magic.”
“Yes, but it was I, in Nimue’s image. Myrddin gave Nimue his secrets—and gladly—but it was Viviane who took them. Only one thing did he withhold: the location of his son. Whenever I mentioned the child, Myrddin would remember that Nimue was dead and banish her image from his dreamscape. I tried entering his dreams in other guises, but it didn’t work. He refused to divulge that secret.”
“But he taught you the spell you needed?”
“He did, and I used it.” Again, her eyes looked into the past. “One night, Myrddin slept in his forest under a yew tree. I sent an avatar of Nimue into his dreams to distract him. As Viviane, I stood beside his sleeping body and wove the binding spell. When the spell was too far advanced to resist, I woke him. I didn’t want that bastard spending eternity in happy dreams of Nimue; I wanted him to suffer. He saw me, felt the binding spell, knew I’d trapped him—and why. I made certain he knew why. The tree began to absorb him. He struggled, but I told him it was no use. I told him I’d find his demon spawn and kill it. He laughed at me then, said I’d never find the boy. Just before the tree took him, his arm shot out from the trunk. He pointed at me, his face straining forward so he could speak. And Myrddin cursed me.”
I shuddered. “What was the curse?”
“That I’d remember. No matter how many lives I lived, I’d remember that one, as vividly as when each moment was new. When he returned to take his revenge, he wanted to be sure I knew why.”
It was a terrible curse. To experience that trauma, lifetime after lifetime, the pain never dimming. Even if he never returned, Myrddin had taken his revenge.
