than my mom’s chicken noodle soup, but I know you. When you sink your teeth in, you don’t let go until you get what you want. Go to that place in your head, face your personal demons, and then make the Rider battle you there. You wil win. At which point”—he nodded to the knife—“that should come in handy.”
Bergman looked down at the blade. “I have to kil it.”
“Hopeful y we’l be able to help. But because of where it rides, you’l be the only one who can reach its heart. Stab it there and it dies,” said Dave.
“Okay.” Bergman stared off into the forest, his face set in firm lines. They could see the man he would look like in twenty years if he survived this night. And they quietly honored him for offering himself that future.
Cole wrapped Jack’s leash around his wrist and Cassandra gathered Astral into her arms.
“What do I do?” asked Bergman.
Dave pointed. “The cemetery is about twenty yards in that direction. You won’t see him, maybe won’t even sense him until he’s on your back.” He hesitated, then said, “As soon as he’s on you, we’l move past and get to work. We wouldn’t do this if Vayl didn’t think his kid’s life was in danger.
And if it wasn’t pretty much the dream come true for him. You know that, right?” Bergman swal owed and nodded. He raised the knife in front of him, almost like it was a lantern that could light his way, and strode off into the trees.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As Queen Marie’s personal guards strode toward me, not even bothering to pul their swords as they came, I couldn’t help but smile. Final y. Enemies I knew how to fight. And, like most men I encountered, ones that had sorely underestimated the pale, undernourished redhead they knew they could easily overcome.
I pul ed the bolo from my pocket. Once, in Scotland, I had watched Brude’s ghost army decimate a coven of Scidairan witches. But the girls had gutted more than one of his mercenaries using forged steel anointed with a red powder I’d learned later was made mainly from the ground bones of the unjustly executed. It was astonishingly easy to find, even if a tablespoon of the stuff did cost more than a month’s rent.
Since I’d sprinkled my entire supply into the sheath that my seamstress had tailored into my jeans, my bolo came out thoroughly coated and ready for spectral action.
The first guard spoke to me in Romanian. “What did he say?” I asked Vayl, who’d come around the end of the chaise to stand by my side. Raoul took his place at my other shoulder while Aaron hovered behind us, watching the action like a hummingbird who wants to dive in and fight, but is sorely undertrained and outmaneuvered.
“He says you are unfit to sul y his queen’s presence with your foul stench.” Vayl began to reply, the rage in his tone a flaming counterpoint to the ice of his power, rising like a glacier just birthed from the arctic circle.
Raoul said, “Jasmine, wait!” but I ignored him, riding the electric line of Vayl’s reaction right into the face of the soldier who’d insulted me.
I slashed at his eyes before he could think of pul ing a weapon and he jumped back, the shock on his gaping mouth pul ing a delighted laugh from mine. Even more so as I learned that I would, once again, be able to look forward to becoming an aunt. Something else to live for. Cool, that was just what I needed.
I lunged again just as the second guard final y moved his blade into a useful position. My knife sank deep into the first guard’s sternum. He crumpled as the women behind him screamed in furious protest. But then the ladies-in-waiting fel to their knees. I knew what happened next. I’d seen it in Brude’s dungeon, hadn’t I? They’d tear his chest open at the wound, pul out his lungs, and sink their teeth into them before the rest of his body began to melt away as the powder residue my knife had left worked its magic.
“Enough!” bel owed the queen.
Her servants pul ed back. The guard rol ed his eyes up at Marie as she leaned over him. Almost kindly she said, “It is your choice, my boy, as always. You may serve your queen. Or you may be free.”
“You, my liege,” he croaked from a throat already fading into mist.
She laid her hand on him, and presto-change-o, he began to solidify.
My opinion of the queen faltered. She didn’t al ow her subjects to gnaw on each other like a bunch of al ey rats, so maybe she wasn’t as cold-blooded and calculating as I’d thought. But then, she’d just ordered my execution.
As if she could read my mind she turned to me and said, “Rumors run rife about you, Jasmine Parks. They say King Brude has possessed your soul.”
Something about the way she said his name tipped me off. They’d been close once. Cozy enough that it was easy for her to hate him now. Of the twenty-three other rulers in the Thin, had she been his
“What do you intend to do with your tenant?” she inquired.
“Kil the bastard.”
“Then I apologize for the misunderstanding. I assumed the Upstart was in command of your senses.”
“No, Your Highness. He tried. He failed.”
Her approving nod contained al the grace of royal training. Yet that wasn’t her only skil , otherwise the ghosts under her command would never wil ingly fal to heel like they had. Which meant she must have legendary charisma and the ability to connive with the most twisted of politicians. Dammit, I was beginning to like her. Even more when she gestured to the second guard and said, “Perhaps you would be so kind as to cal off your vampire? Toma is the only one of my retinue who can play a chal enging game of chess.”
“Oh!” I turned to Vayl, who seemed to have forgotten that he carried ghost-powdered steel of his own. He’d grabbed the second guard by the neck, no smal feat for a man whose enemy has only partly entered into his world. He’d managed it by dropping the temperature so radical y that even I was shivering like I’d just spent the past hour
