Vanished

In the distance, Marsden struggled under the weight of the lyches, plunging his hands into them and tearing out the burning threads that animated them. They fell down but only one at a time, and he was badly outnumbered. The kreanou watched with avid eyes, waiting for an opportunity to slip its leash, its head turning back and forth as it watched Marsden and then Simeon, whose hands were burning with the gather of power.

I rushed at Alice and she hesitated a moment as I got close. Then she reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, trying to wrestle me down to her shorter height. Her mouth gaped and her fangs seemed to grow longer, glinting with saliva. I put my weight into her, bowling her under me as her teeth scraped against my collarbone.

The fangs felt like knives and seemed to pierce deeper into my flesh than was possible, cutting past the bone and diving for the arteries that sprang from my heart. I pushed my left arm between us as we tumbled and gripped her jaw, shoving her head up with a wrenching thrust. The agony of her bite eased as her head snapped back and the fangs slid out of my skin. Blood coursed down the front of my shirt.

Marsden yelled and I jerked my knees up, separating Alice from me with a hard thrust of my legs. I raised my head a moment and saw Marsden vanish under a pile of dirt and bodies as the angry dead pulled him down into their mass grave.

The smoke black line that co

The kreanou screamed a hunting cry of bloodlust and frustration and Simeon yelled as the magic tugged on them both. Alice scrambled across the churned earth like a deadly crab as I gripped the power link with both hands.

The burn of the energy forced a scream from my throat as I tore the binding apart. The hot fragments of control whipped like fractured guy wires, and half of the kreanou’s leash dissolved.

The silver-eyed monstrosity howled bloody anticipation and rushed at Simeon. It looked like a thin streak of red against the darkness as it pounced.

Simeon screamed as it hit him and he spun, trying to fight off the embodiment of rage, but it tore at him and blood flew. The grid of the Grey trembled and warped to suck in the hastening flow of magic that poured out with his life. The kreanou made bestial sounds of delight as it gorged on him, tearing him to shreds.

The death-shock doubled me over as Alice shrieked in rage and lashed at me, catching her hands in my clothes and dragging me close. She gripped me tight a moment, gri

I flipped the knife in my hand and jerked my arms into her with all my remaining strength, driving the blade into her side. She gurgled and twitched, losing her concentration on me. I ripped the blade down, feeling the rough black fabric of her strange bindings tear and fall away. I felt the power that held her together falter. Simeon was not there to reinforce it. Her legs buckled and I kicked her away. But her upper body stayed clutched to mine by the grip of her hands on my shoulders.

The clothes, after all, were nothing but bandages, holding her severed parts together. As she unhinged her jaw to snap her teeth again into my flesh, my gaze fixed on the choker around her neck. The ruby drops were blood that leaked from the edge of the band.

Footsteps rushed toward us—two pair: one fleet, the other desperate. As I reached for the band around her throat, I felt someone ca

The kreanou snarled close enough to ring my ears.

I cut the ribbon and Alice screamed, her grip weakening. I thrust her away and she fell backward, scrabbling as blood leaked from the ragged, half-healed wounds that marked her body, glowing white and ringed in black.

“Kreanou, no!” she gasped.

Trembling, the creature teetered to a halt, only barely human, barely controlled, its limbs pulled around into impossible geometries and its face elongated into a lupine snout bristling with rows of gore-splashed fangs.

“It doesn’t want you,” Marsden called to me, ru

I dropped to my knees and brought the knife down across Alice’s neck, feeling the stitches pop and the magic that held her together wrench apart. And I felt nothing else: no pain, no remorse.

The last leash of magic parted and the kreanou lurched forward. I kicked Alice’s body away from me as the monstrosity pounced onto it. Her head screamed and thrashed, gnashing its jaws as her breath ran out. I picked it up and staggered to the edge of the magical vortex hidden in the core of Mr. Hardy’s tree.

I started to tumble into the sucking hole among the keening, churning ghosts, but I felt hands grab me at the waist and hold me to earth. I flung Alice’s head away into the pit and watched it vanish in the unknown dark. One of the creatures who’d caused my death—the important death at least—was gone, and though it didn’t change me back, I felt relieved by her passage.

Marsden hauled me backward, away from the tree. The sound of distant sirens floated on the haunted breeze. I glanced across the churchyard, the turf torn, muddied, and gleaming with the slowly ebbing spells of magic. Of Alice and Simeon, only bloodied shreds of cloth remained. The half-decayed corpse of a young man lay among the wreck of Alice’s bandages—the remains of the kreanou, extinguished with his creator.

Marsden kicked the moldering corpse into the vortex. Then he shoved on the shapes of time, and I tumbled through to a su

EPILOGUE

A little over twenty-four hours later, I was on a plane back to Seattle. I thought I should have stayed to help Michael with Will, but there was nothing I could do. Will’s injuries had been worse than I’d hoped and not as bad as I’d feared, but ironically well cared for. I supposed that Simeon was responsible—that seemed like the sorcerer’s style, to keep his victims as well as possible until he was ready to dispose of them—and I was grateful for that much. Michael told me that the surgeons wanted to try some reconstruction on the torn flesh and muscle of Will’s hands, arms, and feet but Will had nixed it in an unexpected fit of anger, saying he just wanted to go home without anyone else cutting on him.

Will had become unpredictably moody, swinging from anger to despair to manic, unreasonable joy over the smallest things. It worried his brother and Michael thought they would return to Seattle as soon as the work, school, and immigration issues were straightened out. London no longer held any charm for them.

The condition of the churchyard at St. Pancras Old Church was written off to vandals. Clerkenwell’s vampires sank into the darkness and kept their own counsel. Of the asetem, I heard nothing. I supposed the one I’d met in the club had reported to Wygan and they were regrouping or carrying on with whatever could be salvaged of their plans. I could have asked Sekhmet, I suppose, but I hoped I’d never see the Lady of Dread again. Not in this life or any other.

I’d accomplished what I’d come for. Will was found and safe. The problems of the Red Brotherhoods of St. James and St. John no longer concerned me. The paperwork to reestablish Edward’s control of—or at least the material grip on—his European holdings was on its way to Seattle and would be there within a day of my own arrival. If he was still around by the end of all of this, I imagined he’d find a way to reassert himself once the smoke had cleared. At least I’d done that much. I didn’t yet know who the mole in his organization was or what was going on, but that was a problem that would wait until I got home.