Al the Walrus scratched his head. “Don’t that put it back on you once you’re in charge, Johnny? Hel’s justice and all?”
Johnny gestured impatiently with his shotgun. “I’m telling you, I will deal with it when the time comes!”
“You’d better not try it!” Mary Sudbury called out in an ominous singsong voice, swaying in Ray’s arms, her pupils as black as night. “I won’t let you hurt my Raymond. Never, never, never.” She shook her finger at Johnny. “Naughty little boys get eaten up by the bad monsters.”
As the sun inched across the horizon, the ghouls quarreled among themselves, which was a lot more unnerving than it sounds. On the surface it looked like any ordinary argument, but there were power plays I couldn’t entirely fathom going on in the hidden depths beneath the words, contests of will going back and forth, all of it fueled by an ever-rising hunger that was barely held in check, on the verge of ravening.
I’m pretty sure Rosie, or whatever the mermaid’s real name was, bore the brunt of their emotional ardor. Hour by hour, I could almost see her being drained. But I could feel it, too—feel the shifting tides of power, feel the avid hunger that crawled over my skin like the psychic equivalent of drool.
Ew. Just . . . ew.
I leaned my cheek against the warm glass of the aquarium. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I really, really wanted to rescue you.”
The mermaid flattened one webbed hand against the other side of the glass, sympathy in her anguished gaze.
“Daisy and Rosie,” Jerry Dunham said in his flat voice. “Ain’t that just too precious for words?”
I stared at him with pure hatred.
He chuckled. “You want to do it? Go on, do it. Call your daddy. Let the world burn.”
Daughter . . .
I closed my eyes, picturing my mother’s face. I clamped down on my emotions, wrapping my will around them like a garrote.
Darkness was beginning to fall when the sound of motorcycles rumbling into the driveway silenced the bickering. Stefan and his posse had arrived. Someone shut off the lights, and the ghouls hunkered down in anticipation of the battle to come. Only Rosie’s algae-covered tank glowed, green and murky in the dimness.
One by one, the engines outside cut out.
“It’s go time,” Johnny murmured, aiming the barrels of his shotgun at the front door. “Let bygones be bygones. Let’s do this.”
I drew a breath to shout a warning.
The muzzle of Dunham’s pistol pressed against my temple. “Scream and I’ll shoot you,” he said with calm assurance. “You first, and the fish second. Is that the way you want to die, blondie?”
“No,” I whispered.
The moment dragged on endlessly. I was acutely aware of the silence, of the breath moving in and out of my lungs, of the circle of Dunham’s pistol hard against my temple, of the mermaid undulating helplessly in her tank, her gills fluttering.
The knob of the front door of the Locksley family’s summer home rotated an inch . . . and went still.
“What the fuck?” someone said in frustration.
In the woods outside, a wolf howled, one, and then another and another.
Johnny turned slightly. “Shit—”
The front door burst inward with a great, splintering crash of wood and glass, lashed by the impossible force of vast, muscular, rainbow-hued serpentine coils moving at lightning speed.
Oh, crap!
A jolt of pure panic gripped me. “Lurine, no! Get out of here!”
And then it was all chaos.
Lurine’s coils retracted as fast as they’d struck. Johnny’s shotgun boomed several times and Dunham’s pistol cracked. Heedless of the gunfire, ghouls poured through the shattered door and leaped through the windows, bursting the screens and smashing the glass panes. I caught sight of Stefan, an actual sword in his hand, his pupils wide and furious in his ice-blue eyes. If he wasn’t ravening, he was damn close to it.
Every other ghoul in the place had gone over the edge. They were fighting hand-to-hand and will-to-will, grappling and pounding wildly. Some had weapons; some were using fists. Unable to reload in the mayhem, Johnny was using his shotgun as a cudgel. The Locksleys’ rec room was a seething maelstrom of raw emotion and naked hunger, and I could feel myself being sucked into it, my essence swirling into it like water down a drain. It filled me with a terror and helpless fury that served only to fuel the madness.
Except for Jerry Dunham, who was as cool as a proverbial cucumber, waiting for a clear shot.
Stefan was holding the others at bay with his sword, which he wielded with the efficiency of long, long practice, his half-mad gaze sweeping the room, searching for me.
“Stefan, get out!” I shouted at him. “It’s you they’re after!”
Of course he didn’t listen, homing in on the sound of my voice; and worse, I saw Cody was behind him.
“That’ll do just fine, blondie.” Dunham pistol-whipped me across the cheek, hard enough that I toppled sideways. “Now shut it.”
Blood filled my mouth. All I could do was watch, lying on the floor with my hands and feet tied, as Stefan came forward, his sword in both hands, looking like a cross between an assassin and an avenging angel.
Until Dunham lowered his pistol and shot out both his kneecaps with calm precision. “Ray, get the cop!”
Stefan went down, his face twisted with pain. Ray D charged Cody, who braced himself in a shooter’s stance. His service revolver fired, and a fine red mist exploded from Ray’s chest. He staggered backward and crumpled. Mary let out a shriek, flinging herself toward Cody.
And then time . . . stuttered. I don’t know how else to describe it. Time stuttered, and Ray D wasn’t dead and shot on the floor anymore. He was on his feet, still charging Cody, wrestling for his gun, aided by Mary.
“Hold him off!” Dunham shouted, putting another bullet in Stefan’s sword arm, turning his biceps into a gory mess. “I just need a minute!” He lunged for the bar, dropping his pistol and scrambling for dauda-dagr and the welding glove.
My chest heaved in an involuntary sob and I gagged, half choking on my own blood. Hell, I should have stayed at Twilight Manor and let Lady Eris bite me. It would have been better for everyone. I swallowed hard, the taste of blood filling my mouth.
My blood.
I suspect that it must taste deliciously of brimstone and ichor, my dear. . . .
It was more than just a cliché.
Not just brimstone. Ichor, celestial ichor. After all, what was a demon but a fallen angel? That blood ran in my veins, too. The Norn had said the answer lay within me. And I was capable of feeling more than fear and anger, capable of feeling so much more.
I met the mermaid’s sorrowful gaze behind the glass, inches away from me. I gazed at her with compassion and held tight to that feeling, letting it swell until it filled me. My shoulder blades itched in the place where wings would have been, and my heart seemed to expand within my chest.
Compassion. Tenderness. Love.
Holding fast to all I held dear, from Mom’s unrelenting faith in me to Jen’s fierce loyalty to Lurine’s mantle of protection, I gathered it and let it spill forth. To the timeless sound of heartbroken women singing the blues and sunlight sparkling on the river. To all that engendered wonder, from the mighty scale of Yggdrasil II and Hel’s undeserved trust to the Oak King’s indescribable majesty. To the ephemeral beauty of naiads and fairies and Garm the hellhound’s slavering devotion to his eternal duty. To all that evoked tenderness, from the chief’s love of this town to Gus the ogre’s crush on my mother to the booger-eating kid who’d helped me gather acorn caps in the park.
Shuddering at the taint of ghoulish hunger devouring my innermost private feelings, I forced myself to offer them up as a sacrifice.
I fed my best and truest self into the maelstrom, and the sounds of fighting faded.
Feeling spent, I levered myself to an upright sitting position. All around the rec room, ghouls had gone still, pupils wide with awe, momentarily sated and blissful.
“What the fuck?” Unaffected by the outpouring of emotion, Jerry Dunham sounded disgruntled. He knelt beside Stefan’s bleeding figure, dauda-dagr raised in his gloved hand, poised for the killing strike. “Let’s finish this!”
Unfortunately for him, there was one other non-ghoul in this fight, and he wasn’t affected by what I’d done, either.
“You’ve got it.” Cody leveled his pistol and fired, and Dunham toppled sideways, dauda-dagr falling from his hand.
Thirty-nine
The spell broken, the fight resumed at a shambling, incoherent pace. Ray D bolted and ran, dragging Mary behind him by the hand. Outside, there was a hoarse shout cut short and then a higher-pitched scream followed by receding footsteps and the sound of wolves yipping to one another in the woods.
Dunham was a few feet away from me, pressing his left hand to his other shoulder and grimacing, blood seeping between his fingers. Dauda-dagr lay beside him where it had fallen, wisps of frost rising from it. With a concerted effort of will, I wriggled my bound arms over my hips, squirming until I was able to pull my legs through.
“Daisy!” Cody was covering the room, unable to pick out a clear target in the fighting. “You okay?”
“Yeah!” With my hands before me, I made an awkward dive for the dagger, the breath going out of my lungs as my belly hit the floor. I spat out a mouthful of blood, inching forward until the fingers of my right hand closed around the leather-wrapped hilt. Its bracing coolness had never felt sweeter.
Cody scanned the room. “Where’s Dunham’s gun?”
“On the bar.” Getting my legs back underneath me, I wedged the hilt between my knees and sawed at the rope around my wrists. Dauda-dagr’s blade parted the strands effortlessly. “Stefan?”
Stefan groaned . . . and did the impossible.
Reaching across with his uninjured left arm, he retrieved his sword, grabbing it by the blade and planting the hilt on the floor. Using the sword’s leverage, he rolled over, the edges of the blade slicing his palm as he heaved himself to his shattered knees and planted the sword’s tip against the center of his chest. His black hair hung around his face, and his breathing sounded labored but steady.