“You dragged me in here. Satisfy my curiosity.”
He considered for a moment. “Look at this.”
He drew her down a short side corridor. A few yards along, the stone blocks stopped and grew irregular, piles of rubble clogging the path. The walls broke away, ragged as if something had nibbled at them. Instead of geometrical corridors, there was a clearing with a pool. Starlight glittered on the shadowed water.
Fascinated, Talia looked up. “There’s sky in here!”
In the clear, clean air, with no other source of light, the stars looked huge and sharp against the absolute blackness.
Lore gave a smile that held the memory of sadness. “A year ago, the sky wasn’t there. There’s still no sun or moon, just stars.”
“No wonder it’s so dark in here.”
“I didn’t see the sky at all until I escaped this place.”
Talia tried to imagine that, but couldn’t. She squeezed his hand harder, feeling his big knuckles under her fingers. Her childhood had been dominated by her father and his Hunter ideals, but there had also been plenty of normal stuff. Playtime. School. A warm bed in a regular house. Lore didn’t need her pity and wouldn’t want it, but she still had a lump in her throat.
“There’s something growing over there,” he said.
She understood what he meant by the Discovery Channel comment. Prehistoric-looking ferns, green despite the lack of light, drooped into the water. Between them were small pink and white flowers—a carpet of the sweet-scented blooms stretching far into the starlit darkness.
“Beautiful,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen these flowers before.”
“Not too long ago, there was nothing here but moss,” Lore said.
Talia’s teaching reflexes kicked in. “That makes sense. The Castle needed to put down fibrous organic material before something larger could take root.”
She felt another shiver, but this time it was the thrill of seeing something incredible and rare. This is an entire ecosystem building itself in fast-forward. Someone should document the phenomenon, share it, make others understand why it was so remarkable. I wonder if they would let the university students in here?
More to the point—would the students get out alive and still human?
“Come,” Lore said. “We can look around later.”
Reluctantly, Talia turned back, her mind spinning. “Would it be okay if I brought a camera in here sometime?”
“Ask Mac.”
They walked for another minute, meeting more and more people as they went. Lore waved to some, but kept moving until they met up with a young man wearing a leather kilt.
“Hey, Lore. Mac’s coming,” he said, stopping to give them a hello.
Lore made the introductions. “Stewart is one of Mac’s new guards.”
Talia noticed that he was heavily armed, wearing a short sword, several knives, an automatic rifle, and at least two handguns. He also wore a thick leather collar around his throat, probably against vampires. It made sense. Stewart was human—she was too hungry to miss the scent of fresh blood—and the odds of survival weighed against him in a place filled with predators.
Most remarkable, though, was the creature perched on his shoulder. It looked like a tiny, feathery lizard, plumes of orange and scarlet mixed with pale gray bat wings. It gave Talia a glare and raised a colorful ruff, chittering. Adorably, it grabbed one of Stewart’s many earrings and held on with tiny, birdlike claws.
“What’s that?” she asked, wishing she could pet it.
“Dunno,” Stewart replied affably. “I found him in one of the cliff areas. He looked like he’d been dumped out of the nest. A few of the avian species seem to be laying eggs these days. It used to be everything in here was infertile, but not anymore.”
“Isn’t there a legend about feathered serpents in Mexico?” Talia asked.
Stewart grinned. “I’ll have to take him to Taco Bell and see if he gets excited.”
“Don’t you have a job to do, Stewart?” said a cheerful voice.
Talia turned toward it. So this is the infamous Conall Macmillan, the cop turned fire demon.
Mac was huge, dressed in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and blue jeans. Blue tattoos covered his forearms. The most obvious sign of demonhood was the faint red glow in his eyes and the fact that the corridor warmed up the moment he was in it. Otherwise, he seemed fairly undemony to Talia.
Stewart excused himself.
“So what’s all this I hear about tunnels and giant arachnids?” Mac asked. “Caravelli leaves town for two minutes and you young hounds are running riot.”
He clapped Lore on the back with enough force that Lore had to catch himself. “And you gave me the boring job of first aid? Why didn’t you call us for the fight?”
“Your guards are spread too thin as it is,” Lore replied. “If you pulled them off duty here, we’d have bigger problems than Belenos running around Fairview.”
“I wish you weren’t right.” Mac guided them down the corridor. “I’ll forgive you, but I’m not sure Caravelli will when he lands tomorrow.”
“I’m sure Queen Omara will keep him busy.”
Lore and Talia told him everything that happened. By the time they finished, Mac had led them into a room with a low cot. He’d invited Talia to sit down as he laid out an array of first aid supplies.
Within a minute, Lore had maneuvered him aside and begun working on Talia’s arm. She caught the demon hiding a grin, and she flushed.
“You both look done in,” said Mac. “I’ll let Connie know you’re here. She’ll find you a place to clean up.”
“Thank you,” said Lore as he finished wrapping a bandage around Talia’s arm.
Connie turned out to be Mac’s wife, and a tiny Irish vampire with long black hair and deep blue eyes. Lore greeted her with a huge hug. She turned out not only to know Joe like a brother, but also to be the stepmother of Lore’s childhood friend. It was then Talia made the connection: This was the person who had taught Lore to read. She looked at the little woman with interest.
Connie was the opposite of the stereotypical vampire. She was perky.
“The bad thing about this place,” she said, her words lilting along in a breathless flow, “is that no one’s ever taken a paintbrush to it. Stone everywhere. It’s depressing. No point in hanging curtains where there’s no windows. Now, I’ve been looking into this interior design course, thinking maybe that’s what we need around here. It’s hard to be morbid in Swedish modern.”
“I’m not sure how the trolls would feel about it,” Lore said. “I think they like the stone.”
“Well, what would you be expecting from them, anyway?” Connie said with disgust, stopping at a door set into yet another dark stone hallway. “If they had their way, this would be one big sports bar. Well, here we are. I did up some guest rooms.”
She had indeed.
As Talia stepped from the stone hallway into the thickly carpeted bedroom, she saw that Connie had an eye for design. The room was done in shades of green, the odd white accent giving it a clean, crisp effect. It was neither too fussy nor too stark, a series of abstract collages the main visual interest in the room. The bed looked sinfully soft.
Connie watched Talia’s response with pleasure. “Not a palace but nothing too bad either, is it? The room has a full bath. There’s another shower in the next room over, if you need it. Watch the water, though, hot means hot. We pump it through the dragons’ fire cave. I’ll bring some extra towels and clean clothes.” With that, she turned to go.
Talia sat down on the bed, looking up at Lore. He lingered in the doorway, chatting with Connie in the easy way old friends do.
Talia blinked, feeling the ache of exhaustion in every bone. She was hurt, weary, and in an alternate dimension run by a demon cop and a vampire who thought she was on Home and Garden TV.
Weirdly, she was content.
Images ran through her head: Stewart and his lizard, Mac, their chattering hostess. The primeval ferns and the stars in the water. For a moment, she was too overwhelmed to know what she thought about any of it. There
