Authors: A.J. Aalto
“Your tongue is unfettered,” Malas warned.
“I've heard that before,” I agreed. “Spicer didn't tell you the whole truth, just enough of the truth for you to taste, is that it? Or did you know he was making hybrids? Did you help him, or did he do that to Anne without your permission?”
Again, the revenant fell silent, and his gaze wandered in Declan's direction.
“It's clear he wanted something different than you,” I continued, “or he wouldn't have chained you up. What was the plan, anyway? Might as well tell me. You ain't goin’ anywhere anytime soon.”
“John Spicer is impatient, and his greed knows no end,” Malas said. “His plantation is already the largest in all of Haiti, yet he is unsatisfied. I have done everything he has asked, and still he wants more.”
“This was his idea?”
“I have no need for such things.”
“What
do
you need, Malas?” I asked. “What was in it for you?”
The rage that flickered across his ghostly face was enough.
“Spicer knew that you were reaching the right age and had the right disposition to do this, and that, sooner or later, you were going to succeed with your experiments. He promised that if the experiment worked, that you could keep the first, you could keep Anne, or whomever it turned out to be.”
“His gadgets failed to control her, but she always answered the call of her true Master,” Malas said.
“He's determined to make it work,” I guessed. “With the Bluetooth. He had to get her away from you, away from your influence. The call of your voice, of your mind, of your Bond, was too strong for him to talk over.”
“And lo, you have rallied your forces to my defense.” Malas smiled grandly. “Your devotion is noted and appreciated, DaySitter.”
“Whoa, hold your horse, cavalryman,” I said. “You just admitted to colluding with a necromancer and creating a monster. I can't just spring you from this rather fortunate trap.”
“Oh, but you must, mademoiselle, for whilst I never did gain
complete
control over Anne, to be sure, my control over her was far
better than
Monsieur
Spicer's.” His smile was unpleasant. “As he will soon discover.”
I followed his logic. “She'll kill him. Infect him. And then the two of them will continue infecting others.”
“I will prevent this, of course, when you release me,” Malas said. “It is in my best interests to protect the humans dwelling in my territory, as I have always done.”
I frowned, again motioning to his casket meaningfully. “You're already under arrest, Malas. What makes you think the law isn't going to be all up in your business within the hour? Can you break those silver chains?” When he didn't answer, I continued, “Can you remove those crosses yourself? You don't honestly think I'm going to release you?”
“What I expect, DaySitter, is that you will carry out the orders you have received from our Infernal Father.” His gaze flicked in Golden's direction, and cut to de Cabrera. “You have the blessings of Asmodeus to rely upon, and rely upon them you shall. With the Overlord at your side, the plague of undead will not touch you as it will others. I cannot in good faith vouch for the safety of your mortal companions, however, until you release me.”
I cringed at the cold victory in his cornflower gaze. As the Blue Sense woke to do my bidding, I drew a big circle of psi around me, pushing out to probe his phantasm form. What I felt empathically was Golden's
anxiety
, de Cabrera's
readiness
, and blatant
conceit
from Malas Nazaire. There was a conspicuous hole where Declan Edgar's presence lurked behind me.
“Your obedience is expected in this matter, DaySitter,” Malas said, his voice still tickling up my spine like a feather. “There shall be no exchange of words, no entreaty heard, no bargain made. John Spicer will be exterminated.”
“I'm not calling on a demon king. And I'm not killing John Spicer, I'm arresting his ass. You, however, are in bigger doo-doo. Spicer's human. He's going to prison. You're not.”
“No, I am not,” Malas agreed, swinging the full weight of his attention at last to Declan. “Am I, little monster?”
Declan flinched.
Malas flashed fang, that single yellow barb. “Crossing by water was clever, child.”
“All the best by sea and sail,” Declan said, and I recalled the first time he'd said it, in the Buick, driving back to the cabin after we'd first met. I didn't understand it then, and I struggled to understand its relevance now.
“I did not sense you for some time, until you were already deep in my territory.” Malas pressed closer to us, and I backed up until I was shoulder-to-shoulder with Declan, who did not retreat. “The ocean,” he continued admiringly. “Yes. All that deep, running water. Atlantic currents.”
My mind scrambled for bearing. Water would have dulled a revenant's powers. What would it have done to Declan, who was obviously not a revenant, but also not exactly human? What the hell was he, to be altered by the running water, to have powers to hide from a master revenant?
“How long did it take for your faculties to rebound?” Malas asked.
Declan faced that with silence.
“What faculties?” I asked.
Malas laughed, a snake's rattle. “They call my Anne the abomination, but look what we have here, DaySitter. George Ansell will also be hunting this little monster. Perhaps he already is?”
Declan's face crumpled only for a second, like a kid denied candy. Then his face tightened in a rush, to pure fury. He pointed at the phantasm accusingly. “Anne is the reason Spicer and his Priors came, not me. Anne, that horrible thing you made.”
“Like that other
thing
that I made?” Malas hissed. “Is that what you came here to find out, little monster? Dreppenstedt cannot tell you. Dreppenstedt does not
know
.”
Declan's project. I'd known Declan was digging for specifics: dates and times and locations, all hindered by the revenant habit of lying about numbers. I watched the side of Declan's face for clues, but it gave me nothing.
“Only I have your answers,” Malas said. “Let's ask the DaySitter which Halfling is more dangerous, shall we?”
“Halfling,” I breathed. “What is he saying, Declan? What is this, the Year of the Half-Breeds? Ogre-vamps and zombie-vamps and whatever the hell you are?”
“Surely, you know what this is, this thing before you?” Malas asked me. “It certainly looks like a man. What say you, DaySitter? Did you find his
godsburden
?”
The melancholy bird I'd only managed to glimpse and had heard scritching at my window and cooing late in the night.
“Debt vultures only follow revenants,” I said uncertainly, remembering the pale flutter of feathers, white and grey.
“And it wasn't a debt
vulture
that you found, was it?” Malas paced forward. “Do you not know what's been under your roof, mademoiselle? Sharing your food? Shadowing your hearth? Standing beside you now, listening to the thrum of your pulse, watching the slow pull of your breath with alien eyes? Paddling through the dark waters of your past for his answers?”
I shook my head rapidly, my words failing.
“I do. I knew the minute he flooded my city with his essence, the day he settled his unnatural bones under Dreppenstedt's roof, stinking of absinthe and anise.” Malas rasped, drawing out his words like he was chewing a smile. “He
smellllsssss
like her.”
Absinthe. He doesn't smell like absinthe.
Not always
, my brain teased.
Declan let out a heart-piercing half-cry, choked off by confusion.
“Every other word out of your mouth is a lie,” Declan charged. “You didn't know her. You weren't even in the Swabian Alps at the right time.”
“Nor was your mother,” Malas countered. “Nor was my dearest, oldest friend, Wilhelm.”
Declan's face went through a range of hard emotion; uncertainty, frustration, and the disillusionment of a lost little boy all played across his brow. “I've got it all in my records, the math doesn't add up. Someone is still lying to me. Centuries of lies, and all I've uncovered is more goddamn lies.”
“I will tell you the truth, little monster, though you will wish I had not.” Malas smiled, but there was nothing pleasant about it. “It was Wilhelm Dreppenstedt, not Guy Harrick, who did spend his last mortal day tearing through his estate like a rabid dog, taking down every warm throat in his path, including that of his own widow, your charming mother. But he was not alone.”
“Guy Harrick was not—,” Declan choked on it.
“Oh, no, child, you have wildly miscalculated young Guy's age, for Guy Harrick is largely disinterested in protecting himself in such a fashion. It was Wilhelm and I who were turned on the very same three days,” Malas answered, and glee lit his face. “And at the end of the third day, I joined him near the Bitter Pass, to flush out the stronghold at Svalbard. Ah, but the hunger of the grave could not be sated that day, nor could our lust for warmth, for life, those last precious drams…”
“You,” was all Declan could say, a soft, sad statement barely more than an exhalation.
I saw it then: the shared black curls, the bright eyes rimmed with gold, the soft, round face. The realization hit me like a boot in the solar plexus. Declan had been interviewing the wrong revenant. Kitty's last words to Harry came to me. (“
The true abomination…I know who…I know who you…father
—”) She hadn't been asking for her own father, she'd be accusing Harry of fathering an abomination.
She'd guessed the wrong revenant. The wrong revenant lineage, as well. So had Declan. My preternatural biology training screamed at me,
Revenants can't breed, this isn't right, this doesn't happen.
I continued edging backward, now toward Golden, patting my sides and back for a weapon, realizing they were both in Declan's hands.
“We didn't kill your mother outright,” Malas continued, “for she was fair and lithe and lovely. You have her green eyes, you know.”
Declan looked like he wanted to make a move against Malas’ phantasm; his feet stayed, though he balled his fist and let out a frustrated keen of rage.
“Wilhelm and I spent our last human moments enjoying her in every possible way, oh my, yes. It was the last thing we did as mortal men. And every man is good for one last drop, isn't that right, my boy? You come to us looking for your mother's maker, child, and you have instead found the immortal who may be your father.” He gave a shrug that could have meant anything. “Are you not pleased?”
Malas continued forward, the filmy edges of his phantasm flowing ahead of him like a fog bank, ignoring the Taser in Declan's trembling hand. His kinetic power shoved three of the closest chairs back at an angle. “Mommy dearest left her boy long ago, did she not? Yes. So very long a time to walk alone.”
That wasn't possible. Declan wasn't a revenant; I'd seen him in full sunlight. I'd seen him eat food. He ate stew, with carrots and onions and garlic…
and choked
. I frowned. I'd seen him drink booze, and never once had I seen him drink blood.
“Look, DaySitter!” Malas said with something akin to glee, motioning grandly with one arm. “You were hunting my poor Anne, whilst far more sporting prey is right at hand. Gaze with mortal eyes upon the
dhampir
, the only one of his kind: son of a revenant and his grieving widow, created with one last vital drop of humanity. Half human, half revenant, and hated by both. Barren of power. Immortal without Grace. Homeless and hopeless and godless.”
I should have felt something, but everything in me went numb. Declan's face crumpled, but his lips and fist clamped hard and tight.
“What did they do to her?” Declan demanded.
“If Mother wanted you to know, Mother would come for you.” Malas grinned at Declan's sharp intake of breath. “Oh yes, little monster, your mother walks the Earth. Mistress of the Eversea, the Lady of Nightfall, Duchess of the Darkest Corner. They kept her alive so that either Wilhelm or I could have our son. We had not expected her to survive as long or as well as she did, gaining strength with every week that passed, and when she turned and developed her full powers, she became a most bothersome creature. But even with their combined strengths, the
Falskaar Vouras
were unable to end her. How could you possibly kill something like that?”
Declan's desperation splintered his voice. “Where is she?”
“Tell me, little monster, do you even know your given name? Do you know hers? The king will only refer to her by sly names: Sister of Worms. Falsefeather. But I knew her alive, and her true name is a sweet stroke in my ear. You must have come across rumors about her, certainly. So very many questions you must have.”
“Where. Is. She.” Declan repeated.
“Release me, and I will take you to her,” Malas promised.
I spoke up. “No, he won't. He's bluffing, Declan.”
Malas ignored me. “Together, we will solve once and for all the mystery of your birth, and answer every question you've ever had.”
“That's not going to happen,” I said.
“You have received the same command as I have, DaySitter, from our Overlord. He wants my Anne. He has given you a ring like this.” He showed me his own, gold with a crescent moon: one moon, one Talent.
I didn't see any reason to deny it, so I shrugged.
“The Overlord must have my Anne,” Malas said. “She belongs to the grave, and to our Infernal Father. You must destroy John Spicer, claim Anne for the Overlord, and bring her back to me.”
“I think that sounds like a bad idea. An extra-bad idea. Right, Declan?”
His eyes were utterly haunted. His bottom lip hung open like he hadn't the strength to pull it up to cover his chattering teeth.
“Right, Declan?” I repeated, elbowing him.
He pulled it together enough to murmur something that might have been assent.
I'd take what I could get. “Right,” I said, motioning at Malas. “This vampire has all the bad ideas.”
Malas’ upper lip curled at my use of the V-word, but I didn't correct myself. “One-Fang going all Mr. Christian on Spicer's
HMS
Bounty
. Why can Three-Face not take Anne Himself? Why does He need me? He's a demon king, and I'm just a Groper-Feeler. Come to think of it, why do
you
need me, Malas? Spicer's obviously no match for you. Oh, wait. Guess he was.”