I nodded. I had heard the story, almost word for word.
“But what is not spoken of is the iron,” he said to me, his cadence changing back to his usual accented English. “Forged metal was rare in ancient times and of great value. For death on a tree, most were hung with ropes made of plants or the ligaments of animals, easy to make and to replace. For iron to be used, the punishment required a swift death. With the holy day of the subjugated people upon them, the Romans who crucified the three required such speed.”
Big H’s voice took on the storytelling tempo again. “When the Sons of Darkness gathered the wood, they found, piled nearby, the iron that had bound the three, and they gathered it and the wood from all three trees. When their father could not be killed and yet walked the Earth, a rotting corpse, they melted the iron spikes down into one great spike with which to kill their father.”
I looked at the necklace in my hand, the sliver of iron wrapped in copper. I opened my mouth to say something, but I had no words. None at all.
“When the Mithrans were forced into the diaspora, the outclan priestesses took the wood of the crosses and created weapons to be used against our kind. The Naturaleza took the iron, and created weapons of binding and control. Two great tribes arose, the Fame Vexatum and the Naturaleza. A war was fought for many years and across many countries, until the Naturaleza heard of the New World. And they came here. Lucas Vazquez de Allyon was one such.”
“And with the weapon of the iron spike, or a part of one, and the magics of the witch circle and the sickness that the vamp . . . ires”—I finished the word as an afterthought—“he hoped to take over the New World now, in the twenty-first century, after the first vampires walked the earth.”
“Yes. And more.” Big H looked up from the necklace I still clutched. “The ferro chiodo creates. With its binding powers it takes that which is and makes that which is darker, stronger. The spirito malign, the immortal that cannot be killed, the thing of legend and nightmare.”
“Like the father of the Sons of Darkness.”
“When they have the methodology and spell for the transformation, the Naturaleza will stake themselves and rise on the third day. Invincible. No weapon, not even sunlight, will kill them. The only way to defeat them will be to take their heads and it would become a bloody, difficult venture.”
That sounded pretty sucky. I had a moment to wonder if a bomb might work, and realized that if it blew them apart, it would also take their heads, so yeah. I pulled the fused iron discs out of my pocket. “These are being used for binding witches into a circle.”
Real fear crossed Big H’s face, wrinkling his forehead up into his bald pate. “How many of those things do you have? And how many witches in the circle?”
“This one was three. The discs got close to one another and they fused. Twelve witches make up the circle, each with her own disc. At midnight tonight, it will be the true full moon. It’s likely that the working will be complete then.”
“You must find Lotus and take her head before that,” Big H said. “I will give you the location of her lair.” He smiled slowly, all pretense of humanity peeling away, all fang and vamped-out eyes, the huge black pupils in scarlet sclera like dark pits falling straight into hell. “You will destroy my enemy and bring me the blood-iron of the crosses.”
• • •
The SUV’s heater was on full blast. The sun was setting, the evening growing colder and wetter. Ice was starting to build up on the trees and shrubs, and icicles were starting to form on the eaves of houses. We sat in the dark, staring at the house, silent. We’d been here for an hour, waiting. It should have been tense or uncomfortable or something. It should have felt weird. But it didn’t. It felt like coming full circle somehow.
We had done this job by the book, researching like crazy, gathering all the records, following all the paper trails. We had then done all the footwork, checking out the properties owned by Lotus, by Silandre, even those owned by Big H. We had checked out so many other places, but they were empty; no lairs or only vacant ones. And all that basic research had been a waste of time. All I had needed was a scrap of paper given to me by the MOC of Natchez. He had known where she was all along, but until I ripped away the binding, he hadn’t been able to tell me, and none of his people had been able to speak of it either.
Lesson learned—save the MOC first. Then go after his enemy.
Now Bruiser and I were back at the house with the turret, the one where we had found Esther McTavish beheaded, and a charnel room in the basement.
I hadn’t gone down to the basement then, hadn’t inspected the place. I should have. I had screwed up, thinking that no one was left there.
Now it was just Bruiser and me, waiting in the icy rain for our backup. There would be no debate now, no unexpected visitors, no preacher standing in the rain, praying for us to succeed. No Rick to tear out the throat of a vamp. No Soul to ward us.
We would go in without the Kid or Rick. . . . My hands clenched in the dark. It was just the two of us, because we had snuck out of Esmee’s and taken off like bats on fire, leaving behind anything electronic that the Kid could use to track us. We would go in alone because we were the only ones who stood a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving. And everyone knew what happened to a snowball in hell. I smiled grimly at the thought.
We had found what we were looking for, and Bruiser had called Leo, who had authorized the funds. And then Leo had called in the backup we needed. Leo. Not me. Because he wouldn’t have come for me.
A pickup truck pulled in behind us; a bear of a man climbed out of the truck, the whole thing rocking like a toy.
Without speaking, we unbuckled and left the SUV, not locking the doors, and walked around to the back of the vehicle to meet Evan Trueblood, Molly’s husband. He stood in the rain like a mountain in the fall, topped by red hair and beard, a man so big he made two of Bruiser, and without an ounce of fat on him.
“How many people now know what I am, what my daughter must be, because of you?”
“Too many,” I said. Justified guilt swarmed through me, earned because Big Evan’s being a sorcerer had been a secret until I came along. And because his secret was out, Angie Baby and Little Evan, his children, faced future danger. “Leo’s vamps know. Rick. But not Rick’s partner. Soul. She knows there’s a witch because of Rick’s spell music, and she might have figured it out, but she hasn’t been told, and therefore, PsyLED doesn’t know. But when they find out—and they will eventually; that is always a given—we’ll be there to protect you and yours.”
I could hear his molars grinding. “You know how much I hate you?” he ground out.
“Yeah. I also know that what happened to your wife and to your kids when they were attacked by witch vamps was not the fault of my being evil. Just me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I also know that the real reason you hate me is that you feel like you didn’t do a good enough job of protecting your family. And because you can’t stand that thought, you hate me instead.”
Evan growled, so much like a bear that I chuckled. “You through being a pop psychologist?” he asked. “Because I’m here to a job and get back home. To my family.”