“I’m going.” The black-and-olive mist swirled up around his knees. I concentrated, making the mist rise thicker and faster, until it obscured Pryce. With a single, strong puff, I blew the mist away. All trace of Pryce blew away with it.
I turned to Mab, eager to hear her thoughts about Pryce’s prophecy. But her colors were rising around her.
“Sleep now, child,” she said. “You need to rest for tomorrow.” Then she, too, was gone. Before I could call her back, sleep swallowed me whole.
26
I SLEPT UNTIL ALMOST NOON, THEN FOUND MAB IN THE library. She sat at her desk, bent over a book, probably the book, and looked up when she heard me. She wore her black training clothes, and there was a determined set to her jaw that showed how worried she was.
She didn’t waste time with good morning. “So Pryce believes you’re destined to bear his child.”
Picturing Cysgod’s hideous face, I couldn’t suppress a shudder as I nodded. “Have you ever heard a prophecy like that?”
“No. But I consulted the book this morning and there it was, clear as a bell. From a goddess two lines diverged, but they shall be reunited in Victory. Is that what it said to you?”
“Word for word.” I felt almost giddy with relief to finally share the burden of that prophecy with my aunt. “But there’s got to be another way to interpret it, right? What do you think it means?”
“Don’t ask me that, child. Pryce has tried to force your thoughts about its meaning down a certain track. I won’t influence you that way. Remember what I said before: Hold the words lightly in your mind. Don’t allow anyone—not Pryce, not me, not even yourself—to sway you toward one meaning or another.”
“What’s the point in wrestling with the damn book if I can’t try to understand it?”
“You can try. In fact, you must try. Pryce refers to the book to plot his moves. But the book works against us as we attempt to use it. Try to understand, but don’t accept any meaning as definitive. And above all—”
“I know, I know. Be pure.”
“It’s the only way to defeat him, child.”
I could see that, sort of. Pryce wanted to make me into something I wasn’t. So being pure meant protecting myself from his manipulations. Still, my future didn’t look too great from where I stood: Fail the third test and die, or make demon babies with Pryce.
Whoa, stop right there. That was exactly the kind of thinking Mab was warning me about.
“The book revealed more than the prophecy. It narrated last night’s battle at the pub. I’ll attempt to repeat it as the book gave it to me.” She described what she’d read. “Is that accurate?”
“Yeah, except it makes Cysgod sound like a hero and me like a complete klutz.”
She smiled. “You’re no klutz, child. Pryce would have you believe you won by sheer luck. But the ability to improvise is an important skill for any fighter.” She scrutinized my face, as though trying to read my thoughts. “If you do believe it was luck, think of it this way: Luck means destiny is on your side, not working against you.”
“Do you believe in destiny?”
“I believe we make our own. Here”—she got up from her desk chair—“you have a go. I’ve worked with the book all morning. ‘Wrestled’ would be an apt metaphor. But it gave me more information than it has in a long time. Perhaps it will show you something new.”
The book waited on my aunt’s desk like a steel trap, ready to snap off my hand when I touched it. I stalled. “Why did the dream phone work last night? I made the tea extra strong.”
“I warned you the tea’s power would lessen.” She rapped the book and gestured toward the chair. “Time’s short, child.”
I plopped myself down and reached for the open book, thinking I’d rather be outside taking my chances with the Morfran again.
Mab pulled up a chair beside me as I studied the page. It was Pryce’s damn prophecy again. I was sick to death of hearing about my destiny to reunite the lines. I stared and stared, the letters blurring, but I didn’t get anything more than what I already knew: And shall thrice-tested Victory be conquered? First, the carrion-eater consumes living flesh. Second, a battle in the world between the worlds.
Third. The third test had to come next. What was it?
The next page showed an illustration I’d seen before, although I could have sworn it appeared earlier in the book—not that it mattered. Things seemed to move around inside this book as they pleased. Difethwr pointing at a hill, crows flying out of a square cave mouth. I focused on the picture; understanding didn’t always come through the text. Third …
I leaned forward.
Third, Victory falls …
An explosion of words blasted through my mind. Victory, tested, conquered, Morfran, falls, lady, Cerddorion, death. I tried to catch hold of the meanings, but it was like trying to grab individual snowflakes in a blizzard. The contents of the book flooded my consciousness—not word by word or phrase by phrase, but everything, all at once. My head screamed with noise and pain.
I tried to look away from the page, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move, couldn’t close my eyes. The illustration changed. Crows—thousands of them—poured from the cave. They darkened the sky. And they kept coming. They blacked out the picture, then the page. Still they kept coming, spilling onto the next page and obscuring its text. They flooded the pages to the very edges.
From the cacophony in my head, a single word emerged. Death. It pounded like a drumbeat: Death. Death, death, death, death, death.
I jumped up, knocking over the chair, and backed away. The screaming in my head grew louder. I screamed back to drown it out. Deathdeathdeathdeath. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hands against my ears, trying to make it stop. Stop! Deathdeathdeathdeathdeath. I staggered a few steps, then fell to my knees. Deathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeathdeath.
Abruptly, it ceased. I stopped screaming, too, my throat raw. My ears felt like they were bleeding.
“Vicky—can you hear me, child? Are you all right?” Mab was beside me, shouting, her hand on my shoulder. I sensed she’d been shouting for a while.
I put my hand on hers. “I’m okay,” I croaked. “Give me a minute.” I sat still, waiting for my heart to stop pounding. My mind felt dirty, like it had been smeared by a filthy rag. But it was quiet.
When I opened my eyes, I saw where I’d fallen. The one place in this room I’d avoided for ten years. I kneeled in the exact spot where my father had died. The outline of his body glowed faintly beneath me.
Death. Victory falls.
Mab tugged at my arm. “Can you get up?”
I nodded, shook off her help, and climbed shakily to my feet.
“Come sit by the fire. Tell me what happened.”
“The damn book hit me like a freight train, that’s what happened.” I sat in a wing chair. “When the picture changed—”
“Wait, child. Slow down. What do you mean, the picture changed? How?”
“You didn’t see it?”
She shook her head.
I told her what I’d experienced: how the whole book crammed itself into my head in a shrieking jumble, how the Morfran emerged from the cave and spread across the pages.
Mab jumped to her feet. “Pryce is making his move,” she said. “We have to stop him.” She paced in front of the fireplace. “There’s an abandoned slate mine about a hundred miles from here. It holds an enormous Morfran deposit. What you saw in the book, the way the illustration changed, tells me he’s on his way to release it. We must keep it contained.” She hurried across the room, calling for Jenkins. At the doorway, she turned back. “Be ready to leave in ten minutes.” She rushed into the hall.
Sitting in my chair beside the warm, cheerful fire, I shivered as a cold shadow passed over me. Yet I felt calm. The spot where my father had died no longer glowed. There was nothing to mark it but my memory.
Victory falls.
Death.
No ambiguity there. I’d try, and I’d fall in the attempt. I was going to join my father.
I was glad I hadn’t told Mab about the third test or how death had flooded my mind. There was no point in worrying her about my fate. Pryce said failure meant death, but some fates really were worse than death.
And if I was going to die today, I’d drag him to Hell with me.
I SPENT MY TEN MINUTES CHOOSING WEAPONS FROM MAB’S armory. I loaded up on bronze-bladed throwing knives—one went into a wrist sheath and two more into thigh sheaths—and a knuckle-duster trench knife for my belt. I wished I had the Sword of Saint Michael. But it was locked in my cabinet with the rest of my gear, two thousand miles away. A sword that size wasn’t practical for fighting in a narrow mineshaft, anyway, so I opted for a baselard, a Swiss short sword with an eighteen-inch blade.
I longed for a gun. I could’ve used an assault rifle or even a nice, compact nine-millimeter pistol. But Mab fought the old-fashioned way: with swords and knives and incantations. Fine for demons, but if Pryce was in his human form, it’d be a lot easier and surer to slow him down with a spray of bullets than with fancy sword work.
Selecting weapons felt good. It was something I knew how to do. If I was striving to be purely myself, maybe this was it. Preparing for battle, ready to step forward to protect those who needed it. Like Boston’s two thousand zombies.
That was one consolation. When I died, Pryce would lose his precious bridge between Uffern and the Ordinary. Mab wouldn’t let him get the critical Morfran mass he needed to attack the zombies without me. Even if I failed to kill him, my death would be a setback.
But I was going to kill him.
I met Mab in the front hall. Like me, she was bristling with knives. “I’ll carry Hellforged,” she said. She patted a sheath at her right hip. From there, she could easily draw the athame quickly with her left hand.
“Good idea. This isn’t a training exercise.” I took off the special ankle sheath and removed the athame. It was much calmer as I handled it, twitching only once or twice before I gave it to Mab. “Now that I have a free ankle, let me get another knife.”