“This is Oscar Ottwell at CSUP, coming to you from the University of Fairview. We’re interrupting regular programming with a request to our listeners to be on the lookout for a lost little girl. Eden Carver is ten years old, with brown eyes and brown curly hair. She is wearing blue jeans, a long-sleeved pink T-shirt, and is probably wearing a blue jacket. She was last seen at around noon at her aunt’s home in the Shoreline neighborhood not far from St. Andrew’s Cemetery. If you see Eden, please call the station immediately at 555-CSUP. Volunteer searchers are also requested.”
Miru-kai moved silently through the Castle, freed to roam the prison once more. Mac had finally run out of questions and let him go. Or, more precisely, Miru-kai had chosen to run out of answers. He had given enough good information to buy himself out of that cell.
Mac wasn’t fully satisfied, but couldn’t afford any more time to spend on the prince’s evasions. Belenos with a key to the Castle presented a bigger threat.
A fortunate turn of events, because Miru-kai had to find the vampire first. Today he was scheduled to collect his payment from Belenos. Just because the thief had turned out to be a despicable double-crosser, that didn’t mean the vampire wouldn’t keep his part of the bargain. No one broke a deal with the fey. That carried with it an automatic curse no amount of time or distance could cure.
It was the prince who had buyer’s remorse. This was a bargain he should never have made. And yet the gem Belenos offered had been too much for even his jaded soul to resist. Over time, the stone had been given various silly names: the Stone of Darkness, the Treasure of Jadai, Vathar’s Bane. It was a fey treasure, and though other species knew it was potent, few even knew what it did. How Belenos had gotten his cold, clammy hands on it was anybody’s guess.
The gem solved a fundamental problem for the prince. No fey could leave the Castle, even with a portal standing wide open. The wizards who built the prison had put extra safeguards in place for those, like Miru- kai, who had the power of invisibility. If they tried to walk out, a wall of power sent them hurling backward like a ball slammed with a racket. That hurt. A lot.
The gem, in the hands of a powerful fey like Miru-kai, meant freedom at last. He had made the pact with Belenos without a moment’s hesitation. He wanted that stone!
But so much had gone wrong.
He had promised delivery of an urn. Not an urn with a soul in it. Again, wording was everything in these deals.
Miru-kai had told the demon very specifically to look for Bran’s urn—the same empty urn Miru- kai had picked up by mistake. Ironic? Definitely.
The idiot demon had stolen Reynard’s instead—probably grabbed the closest pot to the door in his bumbling haste. But Miru- kai could hardly make him take it back and fetch another, could he? He’d found out about the mistake too late to cover his tracks. The pattern mocked him.
So he had decided to tell Reynard about the theft. Make the game a little more fair. That was the fey thing to do. And, of course, by then he had discovered it was necessary to get an urn for himself—for Simeon. The fact that Reynard’s soul was at stake made it easy to get into the vault.
That was the only thing that had gone right.
First, Miru-kai had picked up the wrong urn.
Then Simeon had died days before Miru-kai could rescue them from this hole.
And now, by picking up bits and pieces of information from Mac’s questioning, Miru- kai understood what Belenos meant to do with the urn. What a disaster!
So much for making a hasty bargain in his desire to leave the Castle. A fey child would have known enough to ask more questions before sealing the deal. Carelessness like that was unforgiveable in a prince—in him! A warlord! A sorcerer! The great Miru-kai!
A vampire dynasty? Projects like that always ended in a bloodbath followed by a snowstorm of gloating memoirs. What a pompous fool. Bravo to the double- crossing demon thief for putting a wrench in that idiotic plan.
However, Belenos was a pompous fool with something the prince still wanted.
Miru-kai reached the meeting place, a cavern where the roof was so high, it was lost in shadows. Here the rock was unhewn and the boulders a soft gray with veins of white. Pebbles covered the floor, marking where a river had run long ago. A mere stone’s throw away, a cliff face thrust into the darkness. Deep runnels gouged the rock, hinting that a long-ago waterfall had splashed from at least forty feet above.
Miru-kai searched the darkness. An ever-burning fire flickered in a brazier at the mouth of a tunnel. Flames cast a tiny puddle of light, drawing blade-sharp shadows on the rocks.
The cavern was empty. The others had not arrived.
Before Miru-kai, the dry riverbed wound through the cavern. Behind him, a narrow passageway led back toward the gated wilderness where the phouka and demons roamed. He looked up at the blackness above. Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought the dark held a different quality tonight. It looked almost like, well, sky instead of rock so high it was lost in shadow. It had to be his imagination, because there were no stars, or moons, or any glimmer of relief in the velvet black. He wanted to be free so badly he was imagining things.
He yearned for the weave of his existence to change.
A tiny figure darted out of the tunnel, its wings whirring like the flight of a dragonfly. Miru- kai got to his feet as the little fey zipped around the brazier, circling the light.
“Greetings, Shadewing,” said Miru-kai.
The fey’s body was no longer than Miru- kai’s hand, spindly and frail. The skin was dark blue, with hair the color of forget- me-nots. The overall effect was waif-like, if one missed the needle teeth, claws, and eyes that glowed like hot coals. Shadewing was a bringer of nightmares, the one who soured milk and made babies cry in the dead of night. In other words, a nasty little bastard at the best of times, and one of the prince’s most clever emissaries. Miru-kai had trusted him as a go-between on many occasions.
“The vampire king sends his warmest wishes,” Shadewing said with a voice that was lovely and yet chill. It made Miru- kai think of the frost on fallen autumn leaves.
“He did not choose to come in person?” Miru-kai said with sarcasm. “How like a vampire to take what he wants and then never call.”
“The vampires sent me ahead. Belenos is no more than a minute behind me.” The little fairy twisted in the air, looking behind him. “Less than that.”
A pair of goblins, hulking brutes in bronze-plated jerkins, gold rings glinting on their tusks, lumbered from the mouth of the tunnel. Those were Miru-kai’s guards. Dark-suited vampire guards stood behind them, their pale faces seeming to float in the shadows. In their midst stood the tall, red-haired King of the East.
Belenos stepped forward, moving like a tall-prowed ship cutting the sea. The image was apt. There was something of the plundering marauder still lurking in his topaz eyes.
Miru-kai schooled his expression to hide his contempt. The prince and the king faced off at a polite distance, making formal bows.
“I, Belenos, monarch of the Eastern Kingdom of the Vampires, surrender your payment.”
He was holding a yellow gem no bigger than a peppercorn, held by a claw of gold.
“I, Miru-kai, prince of the dark fey, accept your payment.”
Miru-kai held out his hand. Belenos dropped the gem into his palm. Miru- kai’s fingers closed over the dainty object, feeling the jolt of power as soon as he touched it—fey magic calling to fey magic. It would take him time to learn the gem’s secrets, but now he held a world of potential in his hand.
“Our business is concluded,” Belenos intoned. Obviously, he was already feeling his inner emperor.
Vomitous cretin.
Miru-kai slipped the loop of chain over his wrist, sparing a glance for the gaggle of vampires standing a few yards away. What did one call a group of the Undead? Flock? Herd? Fang? A suck of vampires?
There was something very obviously not a vampire in their midst. He could just make out a small form, one that glowed with life. “Is that a human child?”
He loved human children.
This one was female, just on the cusp between child and maiden. She was wedged in between the vamps,
