I think about it. “I . . . don’t know. I knew it was inside of Ian. His eyes turned pitch-black, and his voice”—I breathe deeply—“was not his. When I forced him to look at his reflection in the water, it . . . fell out. It was trapped in the water.”
“Holy water,” Tristan offers. “Had to be nothing else but.”
“Then what?” Jake says.
By now the crowds had grown thinner, but people were still walking around us. I lower my voice. “It sort of exploded. Turned the water black, like oil.” I look at Eli. “Then the whispers started, I grabbed Ian, and we hauled ass out. That’s when you saw us.”
“Two minutes, Ri,” Eli says. “That’s how long you were gone.”
I laugh. “Well, in there? In alternative-world Edinburgh? I was gone at least thirty minutes, if not more.”
Another walking tour—this one small, only six people—moves toward us. The woman leading the tour is wearing a big black cape lined in deep purple. She has a mass of blond hair piled high on her head. She pauses as she passes me, and our eyes meet briefly. Not sure why, but I don’t think it’s my inked wings. I bank her features to memory. I’m in unfamiliar territory here. I trust no one. Or anything, now.
We’re walking now, up toward the castle. We stop at a slight, supernarrow alley as another small walking tour emerges. “I’m Rob the Foul Clenger, and this is the real Mary King’s Close,” the man leading the tour announces in a thick brogue. “My job was to clean up the plague victims. Some say to this day those very souls wander Mary King’s Close, searching for various appendages that may have rotted off whilst sick.”
Two young girls say “Eww” simultaneously.
The group moves on, and I glance down the close. Tightly quartered, it’s dark, dank, and reeks of death. Even bygone death. I can smell it. The lamps cast a faint orange hue against the stone.
“All the inhabitants died of the plague. Typhus. Cholera.” Jake says and shakes his head. “Nasty times.” He looks at Tristan. “Would’na want to go back there.”
“Nor I,” Tristan agrees.
We continue walking toward the castle. We pass many small passages, closes, wynds—whatever. No way am I ever going to be able to remember them all. There are too many.
“I ran inside St. Giles’ and it wasn’t St. Giles’,” I say.
“That’s because you touched a soul taken over by . . . whatever it was. It manipulated you, forced you into its world. Had you entered the church first, it would have been different. And I suspect the Fallen are behind it all,” Jake adds.
“Swell,” I answer, and continue to note landmarks on my way, various shops and businesses—mostly tourist stuff—along the Mile. Finally, we make our way to the end, and I glance up at Edinburgh’s mighty castle, all lit up and majestic.
Yet a heavy blanket of evil veils the area. Everywhere I look, I smell, I sense darkness, lurking in every shadow, close, wynd, and the many ye old shoppes lining the way. If it’s this ominous now and the Fallen are on downtime, I can only imagine what it’s like when they’re full force.
I have a feeling I’ll find out soon enough.
We walk the streets a bit longer, and a different sort of people emerge. The tourists, for the most part, pack it in for the night. The tartan shops, cafés, woolen mills, and bakeries close. Nightclubs open. Bars and pubs boom with activity. And along the Royal Mile, the city’s youth appear. Mostly in groups and having a rousing good time. Some with ink and piercings. Some Goth. Some all in a class of their own. Some just as ordinary as any suburbanite. Let them carouse. Because Hell is about to break loose.
As we head back to the Crescent, another choking sense of dread overcomes me. I wonder what will happen once the Fallen emerge again with their hideous Jodís, and they realize help has arrived to eradicate them. I think it will be on. Us against them. And shit’s gonna hit the fan.
I don’t wanna be in front of the fan.
Back on Canongate, Tristan and I duck into Bene’s and order, well, just about everything. While we wait, I look at Tristan. “So. You used to be a fierce thirteenth-century knight. And a ghost.”
He grins. “Still am. A fierce knight, that is. A ghost no longer.”
I cock my head. “So how did it all happen? How did you . . . become human again?”
Tristan nods. “Aye, well you see, it all began when—”
“Wait, let me see for myself,” I say, and simply touch Tristan’s arm.
I see his white smile before the air around me turns pitch-black, and then suddenly I’m in an ancient castle. At least I’m not nauseated anymore.
I’m now Tristan . . .
Tristan tried to rid his mind of everything, save the idiot before him. Quite a difficult task, knowing his woman, whom he’d never been able to so much as kiss, stood no more than twenty paces away. That would soon change.
He breathed at a steady, even rate, his stare fixed as he slowly walked a predatory circle around Erik. Damnation, he could barely believe it. “What does it feel like to come back after all these centuries? After lying beneath that oak with twisted yew about your neck? To be a traitor? To take the lives of those you welcomed in to your hall? Gaining the trust of their fathers. Treating us like sons? Being our leader. Tell me, Erik.” He all but growled. “I want to know.”
Erik, smooth and agile as ever, countercircled. “Feels bloody wonderful, to be truthful. I gave you everything, de Barre. My knowledge, my training skills—everything.” The cynical smile curving his lips made his face appear sinister. He thrust with a vicious strike. “What did you do for me in return?” He charged this time, and Tristan deflected the blade with his own. “You took my only child,” Erik said calmly. He paused, his face blank. “You took my life.”
“Is that what you truly believe, Erik? That we killed your son?” Tristan said, blade outstretched. “’Twas an accident, and you well know it.”
The pain on Erik’s face proved he did not. “Fifteen trained knights, and you couldn’t protect one small boy? Nay,” he said, his voice cracking. “’Twas no accident. You allowed it.” He arced his blade. “Even seven centuries of being a damned soul isn’t enough of a repayment for what you took from me.” A smile touched his mouth. “Mayhap your life. Again.”
The sickness his foster father suffered pained Tristan, but at the same time, he knew there would be no saving Erik. His mind had turned evil from hatred. But Tristan wanted to know everything, questions answered. He owed it to his men. He continued to circle. “Why Andrea?”
Erik laughed. “Right place, right time. For me anyway.” He jabbed at Tristan. Her unfortunate employer happened to be the one to free me from that cursed yew, which allowed me to escape my tormented prison. One, I might add, my own sweet mother placed me in.”
Tristan continued to circle, Erik following his lead. “How did you get their swords and helms?”
Erik’s face hardened as he followed Tristan’s lead. “I gathered them after your men died in the dungeon. I’d already cursed them, you see, but their deaths came more slowly than yours.” He smiled. “I’d bound the armor and planned to bury them so no one would find them, but I hadn’t realized my own mother’s fealty rested elsewhere until . . . later.” He thrust the blade at Tristan, who sidestepped. “She followed me out to the hole I’d dug and all but took my bloody head off. Next thing I knew, I was here.”
Tristan tapped his blade to Erik’s. “You didn’t know she’d placed a protective curse on the weapons herself, or that she’d taken my sword, penned a rather useful verse on it, and buried it?” He charged Erik. “Or that your mother’s spirit would contact Andi and lead her to it?”
Erik returned the charge. “It doesn’t matter now. Does it?” He held up the blade in his hand, turning it side to side. Tristan’s blade. “Isn’t it odd, Dreadmoor, that you’re about to die a second death at the tip of your very own sword?” A smile slid to his mouth. “Thanks to Dr. Monroe, I have my life back. And more.”
“Nay, you don’t.” Tristan moved toward Erik, the arc of his blade swiping the air.
Erik attacked full force, anger turning his face bloodred. With vehemence, he charged.
He waited for Erik to advance, coming within a few inches of Tristan’s neck. In a move the Dragonhawk had made famous, he deflected the steel and used his elbow to hammer a stunning blow to Erik’s jaw.
Erik stumbled back, shook his head as if to gather his wits, then charged Tristan with a bloodcurdling yell. “I will not yield!”
Tristan remembered the same words in the dungeon more than seven centuries before. Except this time, they were reversed.
Ducking and missing the sword’s blow, Tristan fell to his knees and plunged the blade into Erik’s stomach. “Aye,” he said. “You will.”
Their gazes locked, and Tristan watched the pupils in Erik’s eyes grow large until he staggered back and fell to the ground.
Dead.
Tristan’s breath came hard and fast, winded from the battle. Slowly, he rose and walked over to retrieve his sword. As he bent over, Erik’s body began to shake violently.
“Tristan, move back!” Kail shouted.
They all watched in horror as Erik, being the abomination that he was, convulsed faster and faster, his flesh peeling from his bones, his bones turning to dust. Back to where he belonged.
The bailey fell silent. Tristan raised his head and stared at his men. His knights.
“Someone remove that pile of dust from my keep.”
All fourteen knights let out a battle cry worthy of a thousand men. No doubt the village heard.
Then his eyes fell on Andrea. Taking powerful strides, he came to stand nose to nose with her, so close a whisper couldn’t pass. Her eyes widened, but before she could catch her breath Tristan swept her up, their lips nearly touching. His body shook, and he briefly wondered if he would fall over with pure joy.