Fatal Circle

CHAPTER THREE

Being that she was an Eldrenne, I didn’t argue with her or point out that talking with a vampire during the day should be impossible. She’d have a way around it or she wouldn’t have suggested it. So, though I shared a glance with Johnny, I simply obeyed. As I led Xerxadrea carefully off my porch, Ruya cawed softly. Xerxadrea whispered back something I couldn’t understand.

“He’s locked himself in down there, Xerxadrea.”

“I can tend to that.”

So could I, but she was the one wanting in, so I’d let her do the unlocking.

At the cellar door, we halted. While the clouds overhead warned a cold rain could fall any second, I could feel his presence like a warm summer sun kissing the skin of my chest.

Xerxadrea’s strange eyes shut and her hand rose before her, gnarled old fingers quavering as she mimed feeling along the underside of the door. Her face pinched up, and she whispered a single, sharp word. I felt a snap of ley power just as she sliced through the air like a sideways karate chop.

She nodded at me. “Now.”

I threw open the newly unbarred door then reached for her arm, but she had mist drifting around her ankles. I held back while she glided down the precarious steps. I followed, seeing the strange vapor dissipating when her feet safely met the cellar floor. Nana definitely needs to know that trick.

I jerked the pull chain on the overhead bulb. Menessos had lain in the spare cage to die. He was utterly still.

Xerxadrea approached him, pausing at the open door. I watched, guessing she would tap the ley line to somehow make the vampire awaken in the day.

“You found her,” Xerxadrea said grouchily.

Menessos sat up. “And before you did.” He stood, brushing straw from his tailored suit.

I was shocked. My senses had not detected her tapping the line at all. I hadn’t heard her whisper magic words or anything else. Maybe she’d multitasked when opening the door.

“She’ll give me the hanky back and I’ll transfer Ruya to you.”

He exited the kennel and placed his hands lightly upon her frail shoulders. “That bet was made decades ago! I demand no payment. You need Ruya now.” He tenderly stroked her white hair and part of her long braid. “I named her as the prize only to hurt you, then. And now I have no interest in hurting you.”

“Your wounds have healed better than mine,” she whispered.

“Which is why there is no need to hurt you now. I am . . . sorry, Xerxadrea.”

They had a bet about finding the Lustrata? And the hanky was a means for him to collect his winning? “You outed me as the Lustrata to her during the Eximium?”

Xerxadrea spoke over her shoulder. “I didn’t know which contestant it was. At first.” A thought seemed to occur to her. “I told you he fancied me once, as he fancies you.”

I’d thought she had been implying they were lovers or that he’d wanted her for his court witch. I’d mistakenly believed her lofty position in WEC signified her resistance to him. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. “He thought you were the Lustrata.”

“Long ago,” he said, caressing her wrinkled cheek.

“Better you than me, Persephone.” She turned back to Menessos. “I wagered and I lost. Promise you will be good to Ruya.”

“I burned the hanky, Xerx.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“I didn’t want to risk the fairies claiming it.”

Xerxadrea pulled away from him. “That was an accident.” For the first time since I’d met her, she sounded as old as she truly was.

“I know.” His tone was gentle, blameless.

Xerxadrea made no reply.

Into the silence that had enveloped us, I asked, “How did those fairies come to be bound to you?”

“It is a very long story.”

“I’m patient.” That was a lie, but he was going to tell me, one way or another.

“Do you know the story of the curses in the Codex?”

“Yes. Una was a priestess who had two lovers. Some new guy came to town telling of another god, fell in love with her, then cursed the three of them when she wouldn’t have him.”

“There’s much more to it that was not in the Codex. Una and her lovers sought a way to break their curse,” he said. “With their magic, they searched—” He stopped, obviously looking for the right words to explain something I probably wasn’t going to understand anyway. “They searched various astral planes and eventually discovered the fey race. The fey were seeking a new world to inhabit.”

“Why?”

“The fey had made some bad decisions in their own world and were trying to correct them.” He waved it off like a minor detail.

“Don’t be vague, Menessos. I have a war to stop. What bad decisions did they make?”

“Truly, it does not matter.” The vampire began to pace. “Una and her lovers agreed to let the fairy-kind into this world—but, in return, they wanted their curse broken. The fey did not know how to take the curse off, but promised to teach the trio higher magic, sorcery. As part of the bargain, the fairies also agreed to protect their magic rites. The four fey royals were bound to Una and her lovers personally—the most powerful protecting the most powerful—until such time as they discovered a way to break the curse.”

That ancient “curse” had actually resulted in a pair of highly infectious viruses—vampire and waerewolf. The science stole the story’s mystical flavor. I said, “And there is no cure so . . .”

“The irony of it all,” Menessos said, continuing with the story, “is that Una and her lovers also had a secret. It was unbeknownst even to them. They were not aware of the full extent of their curses; they only came to know as the years passed. You see, the fey believed their binding to the three would end when the mortals died . . . but one of them was no longer mortal.”

“The vampire,” I said.

The elusive explanation hit me. The question that had surrounded him since we’d met, was answered. I gaped blankly at him, thunderstruck.

Menessos was able to perform sorcery. He didn’t stink like other vampires. Xerxadrea hadn’t used the ley to rouse him when he should be “dead” while the sun was up.

“You.” I breathed the word more than said it.

His foot scraped along the cement floor as he shifted his stance, but he said nothing.

“You were there? You let them in, you—” I could hardly breathe, and my heart was pounding in my chest. “You were the first! And you never . . . never died.”

Menessos was still alive.