Scorched

Then again, the door hardly needed security. No one was ever, ever going to break in. There was nothing anyone wanted to do or witness across that threshold.

Hell has no atmosphere and the cafeteria sucks.

Mac’s pulse pounded in his temples, quick and fast. He didn’t like having to pass that doorway in the old brick wall, but he had to and he turned to look at it. It was about nine feet high, the vertical oak planks reinforced with black iron straps. A heavy bolt secured it from the outside. It looked like something out of Tolkien.

Behind it was a land of nightmares. He’d been there. It wasn’t literal hell, but a place called the Castle, a prison for the supernatural. It might as well have been the real pit of fire, because he’d be damned if he ever went back inside.

“Macmillan.”

Mac turned to see Caravelli wheel around the corner of the alley, sword in hand. The neon caught the aureole of his curly fair hair, turning it to a multihued halo. The iron gates framed him, a lattice silhouette around the dark, threatening form.

“Back off, fangster.” Mac kept his voice level, but anger rose on a flood tide. He waited as Caravelli approached with the cautious grace of a matador.

“You deaf as well as dead?” Mac said, the words stumbling. The demon inside struggled for control. It would feel so good to let it loose, so easy, so free.

Mac fell back a few steps, bumping his shoulders against the wall. I can still walk away I don’t have to be the thing I hate.

The vampire was right in front of him now, all aggression. Caravelli’s hand slammed against the bricks, barring Mac’s path. Mac jerked away, but Caravelli leaned in. The vampire’s face, with his strange golden eyes, was inches from Mac’s. “You might have just spared me the trouble of cleaning my sword. There is the Castle door. Go inside and don’t come back.”

Nuh-uh. Mac’s hand slammed into Caravelli’s midriff, sending the vampire sailing across the alley to smack with a slap of leather and flesh into the ancient bricks. The sword fell with a clang, spiraling end over end before it skittered into the wall.

Mac didn’t notice the half dozen hellhounds slouching out of Nanette’s back door.

Chapter 3

The mountain of dark brown fur, high as a man at its shoulder, swung his head to growl at Constance, lips curling to reveal scythe-sharp teeth. Drool pattered from the werebeast’s jaws to the floor; ruby eyes flared like coals of hellfire. The beast’s—Viktor’s—deepening rumble vibrated in her breastbone, warning thunder.

There was only one thing that would appease the horrifying monster.

His great, glowing eyes fastened on the spit-soaked, raggedy doll in her hand. Gingerly, Constance held up the toddler-sized toy, doing her best to avoid the damper sections. Viktor hunkered down on his front paws and slid the growl into an expressive whine. As a final plea, he gave a tongue-lolling head tilt.

“Ha!” Constance flung the tattered doll into the murk of the damp, stone corridor, vampire strength giving it distance. The stuffed doll sailed through the air, vanishing against the shadowy ceiling before landing with a faint thump in the dust. “Go, boy! Fetch!”

Viktor wheeled and plunged toward the toy. His jaws champed the air with ferocious glee, the banner of his tail thrashing as he gave a puppyish bounce. Constance lifted her long skirts and sprinted after. Her shoes were silent, drowned out by the scrabble of Viktor’s nails on the stone floor of the corridor.

She kept poor, mad Viktor in sight. He might forget what he was chasing and go trotting off to parts unknown, stuck in his beast-form, dangerous, doomed, and dim-witted as a loaf of bread.

They had been chasing the wretched doll for hours, and her feet were starting to hurt. Still, a game of fetch was about Viktor’s only pleasure. She wasn’t going to deny him. Besides, it wasn’t like she could rule her loved ones from the kitchen, the way her mother had. First, she didn’t have a kitchen. Second, vampires were notoriously bad cooks. She had to come up with something besides mealtimes to keep the household together—so she threw the doll.

Giving what we can is what families do. What does it matter if we’re not blood relations?

Mind you, not every family had a senile werebeast on its hands—though she did dimly remember a human uncle who’d come close after one too many pints of ale.

Constance stopped running long enough to push her hair out of her eyes. She watched as Viktor scooped up the doll and shook it with nightmare fury. The sheer savagery in Viktor’s growl scuttled over her skin, raising gooseflesh.

Some creature of the night you are, Constance. Scared of a dog.

She would have been happier by a bright fire, or anyplace with light. It was always dark in the Castle’s windowless, cavernous halls. The maze of hallways and chambers, stairs and archways, audience rooms and lifeless grottos meandered into infinity around her. It was all stone—irregular, gray, damp, and mortared with magic a millennium old.

Torches dotted the corridors, set into black iron brackets in the walls. They wavered, but never went out, throwing smears of smoky light for a scant few feet beyond the flames. It was never enough to really see what was there, hiding in the shadows. The Castle liked its privacy.

Understandable. The Castle was a prison for foul things like her. There was no outside, just the endless, rambling interior. Prisoners roamed free to make alliances, to set up kingdoms and networks of spies, to make war, or to suffer as the slave of another.

Memories made Constance edgy. Her fingers brushed the knife she wore at her belt, the bone and steel hilt worn smooth with time. It was useful for a thousand daily tasks, but she’d fought with it, too. She passionately hated violence, but in the Castle weakness was an invitation to worse than death.

She had been trapped in this world between worlds as soon as she had been Turned—or at least mostly Turned— when she was barely seventeen. She’d been an ordinary servant girl on an Irish farm who had played with the dogs and her brothers and sisters and had gone to work as soon as she was strong enough to carry a pail of milk. So long ago. So much change.

But parts of her hadn’t changed. She still played with dogs. Constance grabbed the leg of the doll, wrestling with it. Viktor whined, hanging on as she made a show of struggling. Finally, he wrenched it free and galloped into the darkness.

“Stop!” she called after him, breaking into a run again. “Get back here, you sorry lump of fur!”

Viktor ignored her, pausing midlope to chase his tail. He understood her well enough, but had lost the ability to return to human form. His brother, Josef, had escaped to the world outside. That desertion was hard to forgive, but still Constance loved them all: Viktor, Josef, and young Sylvius. They are everything I have.

That was true now more than ever since they had followed their master to this deserted corner of the Castle. Atreus of Muria, sorcerer and king, had been exiled. Constance had been his maidservant since she came to the Castle, so now she was in exile, too.

It was a relief. Finally, Constance had time to do more than dodge backstabbing courtiers eager for favor and power. She could dream. To her, exile was another word for peace, a calm that allowed for fantasies of her own home, with a big kitchen table and loved ones gathered around, telling stories, making music, sharing plenty. Happiness.

How she yearned for that home to be real.

Constance whistled around her fingers. Viktor came trotting on paws the size of platters. The toy drooped from his jowls, stuffing leaking like entrails.

“There’s a good lad.” She thumped his shoulder.

He wagged his tail all the way to his haunches, sporting the idiot grin of a happy dog.

Then Constance heard footsteps.

She froze.