“Scary, but I’ve seen better,” she said.
Reynard did something that made the vampire wince. “Answer.”
“Abomination!” it snarled, and gave one last lunge at her.
“Last” being the operative term. Ashe slammed the stake upward just before its fangs could reach her flesh. She heard the snap of its teeth as they closed on air.
The vampire was suddenly deadweight. Reynard let the body drop, wood still protruding from its chest.
Ashe looked down at the vampire. She knew she would feel plenty later—anger, triumph, regret, pity, selfjustification—but at the moment she was blank. She’d done what she had to do. Once the adrenaline wore off, the rest could engulf her.
The vampire had called her an abomination. She opened her mouth to comment on how strange that was, coming from a bloodsucking monster, but closed it again. It was weird enough that she didn’t want to even think about it. Besides, there were other, more pressing questions—like why had the vamp chosen to die rather than talk?
It could be vengeance. It could be something else. Whatever it was, it was personal. That thought made her queasy.
“Are you all right?” Reynard asked.
“Yeah,” Ashe said, keeping her voice light. “It went down easily enough.”
Reynard sat down on the bench, head bowed. Ashe looked away. He looked glum, but skewering the enemy wasn’t a cheery kind of thing. And then again, you didn’t get into this kind of work to talk about your feelings.
Ashe turned to lean on the railing. Below was the garden, bathed in starlight. A much better view than the vampire. The body had already started to shrivel. In about twenty minutes, it would be a pile of dust. It was like time caught up with the vamps, grinding them to nothing. Once it was gone, they would search the vamp’s possessions for clues.
Above, the stars glittered like sequins on a torch singer’s evening gown. Below, the gardens glowed like a fairy kingdom. It seemed distant and surreal, a pretty mirage she could look at but not touch. She was made from a different element—something far less appealing.
At some point along the way, when her parents died, or when her husband died, or maybe when she’d bagged her first monster, Ashe had let herself slide into the darkness. Now that her daughter was home, she had to snap out of it. Kids needed a bright, shiny world. Eden needed something besides a monster- slaying action figure for a mom. Too bad Ashe didn’t know how to be anything else.
She would try. Goddess knew she would try. She would strive to see the beauty in the world and look away from the shadows. It was her duty as a parent.
She heard Reynard shift on the bench behind her.
“You should come see the view,” she said.
“No, thank you.” His voice was quiet. The dark made it oddly intimate.
“Why not?”
He was silent for a few heartbeats. “I have to go back to the Castle.”
“So?” She turned, leaning against the rail to face him.
He raised his head, but didn’t meet her eyes. “Whatever I see out here will make me restless, and I don’t have a choice about going back. It’s best I see as little as possible.”
There was so much regret in the words, it bruised her. Regret—that, she knew. She could almost taste it like coppery blood on her tongue, sharp and familiar.
Now, finally, there was something about him that she understood.
And, Goddess help her, she suddenly wanted to fix it.
Chapter 3
“This is Errata Jones at CSUP, the station that defines the supernatural in the beautiful city of Fairview. It’s eleven-oh-seven, just after the late news, and we’re back to talk some more about what the presence of the Castle in our town means for us.
“The new head honcho at the Castle—that would be our very own ex-police detective Conall ‘Mac’ Macmillan—has been hiring locals for guards, and a number of our Fairview boys have signed on.
“Well, girls and ghouls, that sounds like a great way to earn money and meet interesting people, doesn’t it? But I’d still ask a few questions before picking up my staff ID card. My sources have learned that, up until this recent hiring spree, the last man to join the guardsmen was Captain Reynard, back in 1758. Why did recruiting stop for two and a half centuries? And why do we so rarely see the guards outside the Castle walls? After that long, you’d think those guys would want a breath of fresh air.
“So, what exactly are our poor mortal lads getting themselves into? Once they’re in, there’s a confidentiality clause that forbids the guardsmen from talking to us. What doesn’t the Castle administration want us to know?”
Inside the Castle, Reynard found himself alone. He paused, letting the portal drift shut behind him. It closed with a faint popping noise that reminded him of smacking lips. The Castle had swallowed him up again.
He straightened his clothes, dusting mud from his sleeve. The light was low enough that his eyes barely needed to adjust from the dark outside. The area where he stood was a round, empty chamber, chosen because it was large enough to corral and capture the rabbitlike creature. Like most of the Castle, it was built of rough gray stone and lit by ever-burning torches that cast barely more than a flickering orange glow. He had expected to find some of his fellow guardsmen, but apparently they had bagged their quarry and left.
Well, he’d done his part already. Captain of the guardsmen who patrolled this section of the Castle, he had gone into the world and recaptured an escaped prisoner. He had done it a thousand times, and would do it a thousand more. His duty ended only if he was killed or the otherworldly magic of the Castle prison wound down. These retrievals were his only break in routine.
One would think he’d welcome them. Instead, he hated leaving the Castle. He hated coming back in. It was a cruel thing to taste freedom and then to walk away from it after only a few hours.
The outside world held everything he had lost, and everything he might be tempted to take. The Castle robbed him of much—hunger, thirst, lust, joy—as part of the ancient magic that prevented overpopulation by the inmates or the gobbling up of weaker species. Perversely, anger and bitterness remained. The Castle had little love, but much war.
In contrast, the outside world sharpened his appetite after decades of nothingness. Sensation—the scent of grass, the wind against his cheek—vibrated in his bones like colors long forgotten, clinging a moment before they crumbled into the dust of memory.
Desire, so heady minutes ago, still clung to his imagination. He envisioned Ashe Carver’s body under his, warm and female, the spice of thyme washing around them. She was strong, but no match for a guardsman. He could think of a thousand ways he’d like to show her that strength. He savored the hunger, imprinting it on his mind before it, too, fell to cobwebs.
Reynard had a reputation for iron discipline. Few considered why it might be necessary, or what would happen if that discipline slipped. On the other hand, he remembered who and what he’d been before he got there: angry, womanizing, a gambler, a duelist, and every other hazard a debutante’s mama might think to warn her baby chick against. That man was long gone, but every so often he felt that devil stir.
He wiped the light sweat that clung to his face and started walking down the corridor, barely bothering to look around him. There were no windows, no views of another landscape. There was only an inside to the Castle, an endless maze of shadowed corridors and vaulted rooms. The stone dungeon had lost its novelty value approximately two and a half centuries ago, but what could one expect from an eternal curse? From what he could tell, curses all began with great fanfare, but were one-note songs. Eventually they faded to the background, like a ticking clock: doomed, damned, doomed, damned.