“Never shoot the conductor,” the monster said. He looked up at the huge lightning rod. “The Heartway takes what it wants to get you where you need to be.”
“How are you taking from me what it needs?” Ed asked.
The monster looked down at him again. “You?” He sniffed at the air in much the same way as that damned kelpie. “Ah, yes. There is something tasty there. It hurt, didn’t it? Killing that vampire?”
There was no point in lying. No point in puffing himself up or giving this fae manifestation even a hint that he wasn’t at peace with what he did. “Nothing hurt worse,” he said.
Never in his life had Ed been so personal with violence. Never in his few years as a deputy, even with the violent types in Santo Guijarro county. He’d seen blood, yes. Gunshot wounds, and severed limbs in that one car crash. But nothing like what had happened in that dim, moldy room in real Texas, which hadn’t been much different than the one conjured by the Heartway for Wrenn Goodfellow.
There’d also been glass jars there, in Texas. And body parts.
The monster—the conductor—sniffed. “Ah…”
And this place shifted.
There’d been an autopsy table, too, but unlike the Heartway room’s table, the vamp’s had been on the floor. Ed inhaled sharply. The strangers from Minnesota who said they were magical—they were magical, he’d seen one turn into a frickin’ wolf—were supposed to be here. They were supposed to help.
He had a baby boy at home. He was a deputy. He wasn’t supposed to deal with serial killers.
He hit that vampire with the butt of his shotgun. The vile thing winced enough to allow Ed sufficient leverage to roll away. He shot out a window. Light streamed in. The vamp screamed.
Ed curb-stomped the monster’s head against the edge of the autopsy table.
The shift reversed.
The monster—not the vamp in Texas, the conductor—sniffed at his face. “Slayer,” he whispered. He sniffed again then sat up. “I will give you a boon, little mundane: You are right to fear what you fear.”
What the hell did that mean? Damned fae and their tricks.
The monster pointed at Ed’s face and laughed. “I like you!” He lifted his other hand off Ed’s chest and nodded over his shoulder. “You’re not the one who’s supposed to have the token, little mundane.”
Ed lifted his head to look.
Wrenn stood in the threshold of a door. Darkness roiled behind her as if there wasn’t a room back there, only void. She wore a loose white shift of a dress, one with a tie at the neck that stretched open enough he saw her shoulder. Her hair hung free and cascaded down her back like black fire.
Neither the shift nor her hair covered her scars. One coiled up the from her chest and around another, smaller, star-shaped scar. Then it ran up the side of her neck where it sprouted into a tree-like pattern on the side of her face. Yet another, darker scar ran down her right arm.
A man stepped between her and the monster. His clothes were some sort of old style, the kind with floppy shirts and pants that only buttoned. His short hair was messy like he’d just gotten out of the shower, or moved out from under the rain leaking in from the ceiling. His eyes gleamed the same blue as the electricity surrounding the rod.
That’s Victor Frankenstein, Ed thought.
Victor snatched Wrenn’s arm and yanked her toward him, all while staring wide-eyed and terrified at the monster. She didn’t respond, or pull away, even when he licked her cheek. She just watched her vampire brother.
The monster bolted off Ed and straight for the man.
The Wrenn Ed knew manifested between him and where the monster grabbed hold of Victor Frankenstein. The modern Wrenn without scars, whose soul had been bared to him by this place. The one wearing the black leather jacket. She grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted his upper body off the floor.
Behind her, a snap. Then a wet ripping. A gurgle.
Wrenn squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
She slammed him against the hard, dry, dusty Texas ground.
Chapter 22
Pebbles bounced along the dry ground away from Ed and Wrenn’s shuffling feet.
She gasped and rolled away from him, her hand over the left side of her face as if he’d just slashed her cheek.
He hadn’t. Someone—something—had, right where Victor had licked the aspect of Wrenn in the white dress. Blood seeped through her fingers.
“You okay?” The elves never did anything like that. Not that kind of blood magic.
Wrenn gasped again and… flickered.
Ed blinked. Was it the shadows? His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom. Except he’d seen flickers like that before, when a glamour broke.
“I didn’t have a token.” She looked at the blood on her hand. “The Heartway took… other things.”
Something in his mind flickered as if an internal glamour wavered. Not now, he thought. He hadn’t had a flashback to his boot coming down on that vamp’s jaw in years. To how much different vampire blood smelled from mundane blood. To…
He rubbed his face. Damned fae magic took a slice out of his brain.
“Did you…” He shook and tapped his own temple.
Her eyes narrowed. “It can’t take from you. You’re a mundane.”
So are you, he thought.
She patted at the cut on her cheek. It, at least, had already stopped bleeding.
The Heartway had showed Ed something he shouldn’t have seen. Not only his own flashback, but hers, too. He nodded once and let it be. It wasn’t his place to add to the invasion.
Wrenn staggered to her feet and moved into the shadows. She obviously needed a moment.
He looked around. Crumbling adobe walls surrounded where they landed. To their west, a gap in the wall showed the final salmons and pinks of evening as they spread over the horizon. To their east, another gap in the walls—pretty much only the corners of the building still stood—revealed thick brush. Something skittered away, probably a
