feet.
There was a terrible, terrible pain in his chest.
“Captain Reynard!” Eden shook him with all her strength as the world went black.
Ashe strode in Mac’s wake, Alessandro swift and silent behind them. They had found Mac easily enough. He’d been firing questions at a little blue fey no larger than one of Eden’s fashion dolls. The thing was trying to explain something about vampires and kidnapping and children. When Ashe showed up, argument stopped and they were on the move again.
The demon stormed into a huge, dark cavern. Angry heat blasted from him in waves. As soon as she could, Ashe stepped sideways, finding cooler air. The minute they reached open ground, she broke into a run.
Reynard sprawled in the middle of the cavern, Eden clinging to his hand.
“Baby!”
Eden gave a wordless cry and bolted across the stone floor. Ashe wrapped her child in both arms, holding her tight. An agony of relief ripped through her as she breathed in the smell of her child and felt soft skin against her own.
“Captain Reynard’s sick!” Eden sobbed. “And the prince disappeared when he heard you coming!”
Reynard! Behind the relief came cold anger, then panic. Alessandro and Mac were already beside Reynard, who was having trouble getting to his feet.
“Get him out of here,” ordered Mac. Other guardsmen were trickling in through the doorway, drawn by the emergency. “Make a portal. Get him back on the other side of the door. Get him to Holly. Maybe she can do something.”
Alessandro picked up Reynard, slinging one arm over his shoulder. Vampire strength made light work of the full-grown man. “Lead on.”
The fey prince had to be guilty. Why else would he vanish the moment the authorities arrived? Ashe released Eden and stood, pulling a foot-long knife from her boot. “Goddess! Where is that bastard fairy?” It came out as a rasp. Frantic bursts of fear and relief and horror came one after the other, tearing her to shreds.
Mac rose, running to the entrance to the cavern, flames surrounding him in a white- hot corona. He filled his lungs and roared to the darkness, “Guardsmen, find the fairy bastard!”
The walls shook with the noise, as if the Castle itself cringed before his anger. Wherever the guards were, they heard.
“But he didn’t do anything wrong!” Eden insisted. “He was nice to me!”
But no one listened to a child. No one ever did.
Chapter 19
Sunday, April 5, 10:30 p.m.
101.5 FM
“We’re joined here today for an exclusive telephone interview with Belenos, King of the Eastern Vampires. Your Majesty, I cannot begin to express how honored we are that you condescended to join us.”
“Thank you for having me, Errata. Let me begin by saying how much I appreciate the opportunity to speak to your listeners in the lovely Pacific Northwest.”
“It’s entirely our pleasure, Your Majesty. What would you like to speak about?”
“Interspecies relationships. The human media has long maintained that mixing human and nonhuman societies will inevitably lead to disaster.”
“Not all human media.”
“But most. I’m here to say it isn’t true. Peaceful relations can be maintained.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“Humans outnumber us, so we assume they are stronger. I don’t think that’s true.”
“Why does it matter who is stronger?”
“Errata, my dear, half the time you wear the skin of a mountain lion. Surely you understand the law of fang and claw. Sovereignty belongs to the hunter, not the prey.”
“Excuse me, Your Majesty, but we need to cut to a commercial break.”
Reynard knew he was unconscious, because he’d had the dream so often before. It was New Year’s Day, 1758, at about ten in the morning. He rose from his bed in the big family home in Surrey, discovering that he had slept in his clothes. Drips of wine spotted the front of his shirt and breeches. Well-done, Reynard.
Through the fog, he recalled being rude to his older brother, Faulkner, again. He couldn’t fix on the details. But then, his brother had been drunk, too. His memory would be no better. Hopefully. Reynard wished he could remember what the devil he’d said. Uneasy, he pulled the bell rope to summon a servant.
Outside, he could hear his nieces and nephews shrieking with excitement. He winced at the pitch of the noise, then cringed again when he pushed back the curtain to admit bright sunshine. A soft, feathery coating of new snow lay on every branch and stone, intensifying the dazzling light. He squinted at the scene. The children, bundled in wraps and mittens, were in heaven.
Noisy little buggers, Reynard thought, but fondly. He had played under the same snow-dusted trees in his time.
Then Elizabeth emerged from the house, wrapped in furs, her hands tucked into a muff. She laughed with the children, walking toward them with cautious, tiny steps. The paving stones must have frozen over with ice.
Lizzie. A poet could say how beautiful she was, how soft her fawn-brown hair, how smooth her skin, but Reynard was no poet. The sight of her killed the words inside him, striking him dumb, and empty, and full of lost echoes. She had that power over his spirit. She had kept him from loving anyone else.
Elizabeth, his brother’s wife. She had been his, but then Faulkner, with the title and fortune of the firstborn son, had come along. Elizabeth claimed her parents had made them marry, but he had always wondered. She’d fancied a coat of arms.
After that, Julian Reynard, dashing cavalry captain, was merely a comet that came blazing through from time to time, wakening dreams and stirring discord. If he loved his brother, if he loved Lizzie, he had to let her go.
Reynard started awake. Where the hell am I? He’d never been in this room before. He looked around, his tongue coated with the ashy taste that came from overusing magic. He was bone-tired, his limbs like sodden bread. He moved his gaze over the furniture. It looked new? Old? How could he tell? Everything looked modern to him. He closed his eyes, too tired to keep them open. He was thirsty, but sleep claimed him again before he could think any more about it.
He was dreaming, back in his old home, same day and date. He rinsed his face and smoothed back his long hair, tying it with a black ribbon. He pulled on his new uniform, thinking he would go out and about. A bit of gold lace impressed the ladies.
Reynard descended the stairs, still buttoning his coat. The bright, snow-reflected sun flooded the high- ceilinged hall, casting shards of light through the bevels in the window glass. Rainbows bounced off the crystal droplets dangling from the candelabra, ricocheted off the cut glass of a vase. The unforgiving light hurt his wine- soaked brain.
He stopped before the open door to the morning room, his gaze quickly spotting the coffee service sitting on a table by the window. The sun flooded in here, too, turning the steam from the coffeepot into a gossamer haze.
Faulkner, as fair-haired as Reynard was dark, and another man were sitting on either side of the fire in
