Deep within the groaning manor, her disparate room was wallpapered pink, with lace curtains and her cheerleading pom-poms on the floor. A spell at her doorway kept out anything shorter than the coven's obligatory black cats and dogs.
But Andoain hadn't always been her home. For most of her childhood, Mari had lived with her fey mother, Jillian, in a bright, modest beach cottage on the Gulf Coast. They'd been content there, just the two of them, since Mari's warlock dad had abandoned them with nothing but a jolly promise to be back soon.
Yet on Mari's twelfth birthday, Jillian had packed up their cottage and had taken her to Andoain. There she'd opened her arms wide and pronounced it Mari's "new home." Rendered slack-jawed, Mari had run in the opposite direction faster than even her most hell-bent pursuits of ice-cream trucks.
For two days, her mother had remained with her there. Then she'd peeled Mari off her to leave her behind, bawling on the front porch. To go on sabbatical, to a secret druid island somewhere in Europe. Over the years, Mari had received sporadic letters, supposedly from her mother, but she suspected Elianna was actually penning them.
Without Elianna and her best friend, Carrow, the coven bad girl, Mari didn't think she would have made it past those first months she was abruptly immersed in nothing but witchery. Gods, she missed her friends now...
Beautiful, raven-haired Carrow thought being a witch was the best thing in the world. Whenever other Lore creatures like the nymphs and satyrs turned their noses up at the "hex-hacks," Carrow would raise both her hands in the rock-on horns gesture and shout, "Double, double, toil and trouble, muthaas! You just got cursed!"
Then she actually would curse them.
Carrow was one of those rare three-caste witches, though she was mainly a warrior - with an incongruous specialty in love spells. Fierce Carrow was supposed to have entered the Hie with Mari, but then she got arrested at the last Mardi Gras for public indecency again. All poor Carrow had done was to invoke a little-known fashion rule - It's not streaking if you're wearing beads - but the covens had vowed earlier that they wouldn't fix her next offense for her.
Carrow was presently in County. Or probably out by now.
And Mari longed to see Elianna, who'd been the best substitute mother she could ever ask for. Though Elianna had received the gift of immortality from her witch mother, her father's humanity ensured she continued to age. Kindhearted, occasionally befuddled Elianna was over four hundred years old, and without her glamour, she looked every minute of it. She liked to joke that "all the exercise in the world can't help a sunbather."
Chapter 5
Mari hoped they didn't worry about her too much -
"Mariketa, it's time." Rydstrom's voice carried up to her, cutting through her thoughts. "You need to do this now."
Bowe's sole eye slid open when he had the vaguest impression that he wasn't alone. That for the first time in weeks it was no longer only him and the serpent.
"Lachlain?" he rasped, blinking for focus.
"Aye, Bowe, it's me," his cousin said as he knelt beside him, his gaze flickering over Bowe's injuries. Bowe knew he was shocked, but Lachlain hid it well and simply said, "I'm taking you home," then helped him to his feet.
Bowe's sense of smell was wrecked, nearly burned away in the heat and oppressive smoke, but he could still scent a vampire. He tore from Lachlain's grasp and lunged for the shadowy figure behind them.
Wroth, that cold bastard, simply traced to the side, sending Bowe reeling to the ground. All his medley of wounds reopened in a fresh wave of blood.
Lachlain reached for him once more. "Damn it, Bowe, do you wish to die? He's brought me here to retrieve you."
Bowe tried to break from Lachlain's iron grip. "He put me here!"
"I hold no ill will against you, Lykae," Wroth said in a measured tone.
"Because you won!"
"This is so," the vampire answered easily.
"How?" Bowe spat the word. "How did you raise that blade?"
"It was blessed never to miss its mark," Wroth explained. "I had only to picture a target." The vampire wouldn't be calm like this if he'd lost Kaderin for good.
"You brought the Valkyrie back from the dead?"
"I did."
The key had worked! Bowe felt a flare of hope and swallowed before he asked, "Did you use it... both times?"
"Yes."
Bowe lowered his head. He couldn't hear this - that his enemy had managed to do what Bowe himself could not. The shame of his failure ate at him.
"We retrieved Kaderin's two blood sisters, who'd died long ago," Wroth said.
"Talk of this later," Lachlain said, eyeing the fire. "I see no reason to be here any longer." Bowe understood Lachlain's uneasiness. For over a hundred years, the Vampire Horde had tortured Lachlain in a never-ending fire. Each day he'd been burned alive but could never quite die. He'd only escaped recently, and merely being here must be excruciating for him.
That reminded Bowe... "Lachlain, how can you, of all people, trust this vampire?"
"He's no' of the Horde. And his brother did save Emma's life." Emma, Lachlain's beloved mate and queen, was a half-vampire, half-Valkyrie waif.
"Aye, he helped Emma - for a price. So why'd this one bring you here? What did he demand?"
"For Emma to meet with Kristoff, the king of the rebel vampires," Lachlain admitted. "Kristoff's her first cousin."
Bowe shook his head. "Too dangerous. I will no' have Emma take that step for me."
"She wants to meet him. Besides, we dinna have a lot of choice. Just as you are the only one who knows how to locate that tomb in Central America, Wroth and Kaderin are the only ones who knew how to find this place."