He had to be overreacting. No way a few words were so powerful.
“So I either have to partner with you or allow you to starve.” He pointed his finger at her. “Guess which way I’m leaning, vampire!” He was madder than he’d been about his stuff. “You shouldn’t throw those words around, much less so broadly! It was an immature move. Which is completely understandable given your age.”
“Look, I’ve never made a vow like that before I did with you, okay?”
“Yet you refuse to read the Book of Lore and educate yourself?”
Ugh! She wanted nothing more! “I’m having a hard time believing words could make me starve.”
He pulled that trinket from his pocket. “Vow to the Lore you’ll never take this talisman from me without my permission.”
“So it’s gone from trinket to talisman?” She stepped closer. “Tell me what that is.”
“Perhaps I will in time. If you make the vow.”
“Fine. I vow to the Lore I’ll never take that from you without your permission.”
He held it out to her.
When she reached for it, her hand veered to the right as if repelled by some invisible force. Brows drawn, she attempted again. Same result. She raised her chin. “Then my vow is bulletproof. Good. That means we’ll work together to kill Nïx.”
“I have done this by myself a time or two, vampire.”
“You’ve failed with her twice already. I botched your attempt from the roof—”
“Because I chose not to kill you.” He squared his shoulders, clearly unused to criticism about his skill. “In a nanosecond, I could have shot you and strung another arrow for the Valkyrie.”
“You couldn’t hit her when she attacked me. I assume you were trying?” When he’d been yelling for Jo.
He ground his fangs.
She had him! “Then that settles it. We’re partners in crime for this mission.”
“I’ll make sure it’s a very short mission.” He strode closer to her. “We begin now.”
“I need to get clothes from my place first.” She gestured at her bare feet.
“There’s more I want to say about your actions—my wrath is in no way appeased—but I’m curious about your home, since you found mine quaint.”
“After that, will we go to Nïx’s?” Jo tried to picture a mad Valkyrie’s crib. “Does she live in a different dimension?”
“She resides not far from New Orleans on a property called Val Hall. But there’s no need to go there. I have spies watching it every minute of the day. They’ll alert me if she returns there.”
“How?”
“This rune will glow.” He pointed to a band inked around his right wrist. “In any case, we hope she doesn’t. The wraiths guarding Val Hall make it the safest place for her.”
“Wraiths?”
“Spectral she-beings. They fly around the mansion, keeping intruders out.”
“How do you kill them?”
“You don’t; they’re already dead.” He took her arm. “It’d be best just to show you. But say nothing about what we intend. The nymphs concealed around Val Hall would overhear it.”
Concealed? “So?”
“So they’re there to help me for two reasons. One: I fucked them. Two: They believe I only want to sleep with Nïx. They can’t hear us arguing about how best to assassinate her.” He traced Jo to an overgrown stretch of misty bayou countryside.
Moss dangled from oaks. Fog draped the area. Lightning rods jutted all over the property, corralling repeated bolts.
“We’re in Valkyrie territory now. They give off lightning with emotion. Feed from it too.”
“Do they all control it like Nïx, making cages and blades?”
He shook his head. “As the primordial of her species, she must have learned to wield it.”
“This place looks like a mad scientist’s laboratory.”
“You haven’t seen the worst yet.”
As she and Rune approached a clearing, a sprawling, creepy mansion came into view. Against a background of lightning, ghostly females in ragged red garments flew through the air, circling the structure. “The wraiths?”
“Also known as the Ancient Scourge,” Rune said. “They’re as strong as Titanian steel, and even older than I am. You can’t tunnel under them, can’t fly over, can’t trace past. Overpowering them is impossible.”
She raised her face to scent the air. Thad was here! Behind their guard? She’d just tensed to do something when Rune clamped her forearm and traced her back to Tortua.
“Why’d you leave?” She flung her arm away. “Thad is inside! I can challenge Nïx. She might come out to fight me!”
“She’s not in Val Hall.”
“We can wait there until she shows up.”
“The other Valkyries wouldn’t tolerate it. I could keep you safe, but I couldn’t do anything for your brother until we handled the guard dogs. If you anger Val Hall’s inhabitants, they might take it out on him.”
Jo made a sound of frustration. Resigning herself to a wait, she said, “I can’t believe Thad’s in there.” At least she hadn’t scented his fear. He and Nïx had seemed chummy. “If Nïx isn’t there, who’s watching him?”
“Her Valkyrie sisters. They’re likely coddling him, convincing him to join their alliance.”
In other words, they were brainwashing her brother. “There has to be a way around those wraiths.” If tracing past them wouldn’t work, ghosting and walking right through them probably wasn’t an option.
“For now, our best bet is to hunt Nïx. You have to be patient.”
“Patient? Not my strong suit. You got a plan B?”
He gazed away and murmured, “Always.”
Why did that one word send a chill down her spine?
THIRTY-THREE
Josephine took Rune’s hand to trace him to her home, what promised to be some grand manor or stately castle. As she began to teleport, she and Rune seemed to fade before traveling. Whereas Sian’s tracing was quick and seamless, the vampire’s left him swaying.
Rune frowned at his new surroundings, a small dingy room with red carpet worn down to the foundation and paint curling away from the cinder block walls. A garish floral cover topped the bed, and the air conditioner rattled. “Where did you take us?”
“To my digs.”
“This is where you live? It’s a rat trap! You had the nerve to call my place quaint?” In one corner of the room, next to stacks of comic books were stacks of cash. “If you’ve got money, why not get a nicer place?” This one was pitiful and demoralizing. The only positive he could discern? It was spotlessly clean.
“I like to fly under the radar. I don’t mind it here.”
A picnic table stretched the length of one wall, covered with random things: a phone, a tiara, plastic beads, a metal stick with a camera on the end.
“Immortals with power simply don’t live like this.”
“I can’t get an ID, okay?”
“I could get you one in an hour.” He bit the inside of his cheek. She’d never need an ID because he could never set her free in the world. She still potentially had his memories. “So this is where the fair Josephine sleeps. Since you’ve taken my blood that first night, have you had dreams of me? Experienced any scenes from my past?”
“Oh, yeah, constantly. I love watching you screw two hundred nymphs at one time and kick puppies.”
“I have never kicked a puppy.”
Rolling her eyes at him, she crossed to a garment rack filled with dark clothes, all in various stages of disrepair. She selected black jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt with some band logo, then tossed them on the bed.
“Why did you dress as a man-eater the other night?” Definitely not to seduce Thaddeus. “You wore that skimpy red dress to impress me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” No denial.