“. and he put me into the jars, filled with the blood that kept me alive, healing my burns. I was just too. large to heal in a single piece, he said. But the blood would keep me and mend my flesh. He promised me Simeon’s help when I rose. How was I to know it would take so long? What could I do?” she added, her hand curled elegantly as she made a small shrug. Her black bandages rippled and hitched over her still-raw joints. “He owned me then. And I owe him. And what he wants is you.”
The mood was broken as I felt my phone vibrate in the small of my back. It stopped after one buzz. Then it started up again in a moment and went on for three more cycles. Michael’s signal at last. They’d located Will and were coming to meet me. I didn’t know if they had Will or not and I hoped they wouldn’t get too close or do anything stupid if I wasn’t at the rendezvous when they arrived. They may have had what they’d gone for, but I didn’t and I couldn’t just leave, not with Alice preening and purring in front of me.
“You didn’t have to take Will to get me. I was coming anyway,” I ground out as my guts churned and settled again slowly.
She made a pout. “Oh, you don’t think I believe that, do you? That you would come just for Edward? Oh, no. The Pharaohn-ankh-astet said to take the thing most dear to you. And here he was! I already had your picture from when I first watched you for Wygan and seduced that silly man to beat you. Simeon knew just how to use the photo to make you desperate to come here. Nightmares are so much more persuasive than pleas, aren’t they? How could I resist? When I’m done, I get Edward’s domain in London with the help of the asetem and Simeon, and all I had to do was take Purcell,” she said, waving dismissively at the trapped vampire behind Glick, “and your William. This great fool,” she added, flicking a scarlet-tipped finger toward Glick, “has been the last little cherry on my cake. And I’ll have done what Edward failed to do—hold all of London in my hand, all the vampires beneath my rule. Mine. Not his.”
I felt weak and dizzy. She hadn’t just followed me; she’d helped to kill me and she would push me farther into death for the sake of the debt she owed Wygan. I wondered what had become of my assailant once he’d left the courtroom the last time I saw him. Yet another thing I’d have to discover if I wanted to put my mind at ease or at least shut down the mental screaming that was threatening to overwhelm me.
Alice laughed, the sound purely insane and dangerous, rolling across the still room like an earthquake.
Glick stiffened. “For the Pharaohn? That filthy white bastard? You said they was breaking from the Pharaohn. You said it was for our advantage. Knew I shouldn’t have caved to the likes of you! You brought the asetem among us, you brought him—that Jew,” he spat with a glare at Simeon, “and you turned us on ourselves.”
Alice gave him a pitying glance with a lifted brow. Simeon didn’t react at all.
Glick took a step away from her, glancing at Simeon and picking a route far from either of them. “You lied to us,” he said, amazed. “A thing like you? Deceived me? Deceived the Brotherhood?”
Alice’s expression turned to a slow sneer of disgust. “Weak, useless fool.” She flicked her scarlet-tipped claw at him. “Kreanou. Relieve me of this. thing.”
A low hiss rose on my other side. I whipped my head to look at the silver-eyed monster beside me, but it was already moving. I shifted my glance toward Glick, Alice, and Simeon.
A look of terror flashed across Glick’s face. All eyes watched as he spun around and bolted with the unnatural speed and strength of his kind, streaking for the nearest open doorway. A black wind raced after him, edged in brick red, and blocked the door, congealing into the shape of the silver-eyed vampire—or whatever it was—with saber fangs curving from its impossibly gaping mouth. Simeon and Alice turned as one and walked a few steps toward them, Alice laughing with maniacal glee.
I heard a noise from Purcell and I dashed to him, hoping to get him out of the inevitable line of fire.
“No,” he gasped.
The room shivered in the Grey, flashing silver and red by turns. Something shrieked and Purcell collapsed to his knees as if he’d been scythed down. I closed the distance, but a rushing cold sprang up from the floor and gripped me like an icy fist. I was trapped as surely as if I’d been caged in steel bars.
“I tried to warn you,” Purcell whispered near my feet. “You stepped on the switch. Now you’re stuck in one of these damnable spell cages, like me! Another of Simeon’s horrid inventions. Don’t try anything magical or they freeze you like a fly in amber.”
“What about you?”
“It just crushes me if I move. I shouldn’t have flinched. But poor Henry. ”
Glick screamed, and under the sound of Alice’s laughter, I could hear something tearing wetly apart. Glick’s screams stopped abruptly and the smell of blood thickened the air. Purcell whimpered as the spell squeezed down on him.
“Why, John,” Alice said, returning to our side of the dais, “you’ve got our guest stuck.” Her smile was sickening.
She turned and swept the room with her glittering stare. “There will be no more resistance from any of you! The kreanou has no mercy. He listens only to me and he only wishes to destroy.” She pointed back toward the arch where Glick had met his quick and gruesome end. “That is what happens to fools who try to cross me.”
My Greyness made movement into torture, and every degree of rotation ripped into me as if I were bound in barbed wire. Turning back to face Alice felt like I was being flayed alive, but I managed it.
Alice was watching me. “How nice of you to truss yourself up. Now all I have to do is deliver you and it’s all mine.” Then she added, her voice not much louder than a whisper, but piercing and clear as shattering crystal, “You should know. You should want to know, what it is you’re going to do.”
“I’m not going to do anything for you or the Pharaohn.” That didn’t sound as commanding as I’d hoped; more a pathetic whimper.
She just smiled back and purred words as sickening as venom. “It’s going to be lovely. He’s been trying for so long and now he finally has you here, alone, and Edward where he can’t run. It’s all been so very perfect. He said you’re a gate.” She tilted her head back and forth as she gave her tiny, evil smile, and I thought of my father’s puzzle, tucked into my pocket. It was a key. “I don’t see it. A gate. Well”—she twitched her eyebrows, dismissing the incongruity—“I suppose you will be when we’re done. I am disappointed, however. I hoped you’d make more trouble. He says you have to die just a bit more. I wouldn’t mind if it were a lot more, but. well. He wouldn’t like it. And I have my demesne to look after now.”
She turned and beckoned. The kreanou, glowering, blood splashed, and ravenous, prowled over to her. “The House of Detention,” she said, her voice taking on the strange blue shiver of command. I could see the strand connecting her to the kreanou shimmer with it. “We’ll see what the butcher makes of her. And if not him, your turn.” Alice glanced at me again. “It would be a pity if the kreanou gives in to his nature. Dez!”
I didn’t have time to wonder about the kreanou’s nature and the connection between the creature, Alice, and her sorcerer. I was pretty sure someone was going to kill me—or do their best impression—in a few minutes, and I wasn’t quite sure I believed that Greywalkers always bounced back. It hadn’t worked that way for Dad. I preferred not to test Marsden’s theories if possible, and I just plain didn’t want to die!
The wavering demi-vamp dragged his steps to the dais. It was obvious he didn’t like what had happened to Glick, but he didn’t have a lot of options other than following the orders of his new Primate or being the next stress test for the kreanou.