Revenant

TWENTY

This time, the house was illuminated—it even looked welcoming as the taxi driver let us out at the gate. He’d barely squeezed the small car through the medieval streets of Alfama with close calls at every turn and passing. I’d been too exhausted to react and Carlos had spent the short ride brooding out the window at the city he no longer recognized.

The taxi fare was surprisingly low and even with my meager collection of coins, I was able to tip the guy to a degree that earned me a huge grin. “You’ll want to be more careful with your money around here, love. Neighborhood’s gone to the dogs since the smart set moved to Chiado and Bairro Alto. Still, it’s lovely, ain’t it? Can’t complain about the view, eh?”

“No. And thanks for bringing us up.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.”

We watched him drive away, threading the twisty streets once again with inches to spare and no apparent care for his paintwork. Carlos and I limped through the gate and courtyard to the house.

Quinton and Rafa awaited us in the dimly lit doorway.

“Look what I caught,” Quinton said, waving his arm to indicate the phantom housekeeper.

“How?” I asked.

“With the key. We’re in her version of the house right now. That’s why I left the gate and door unlocked for you. Holy crap!” he added as we stepped from the shadow into light. “What happened?”

He lunged to grab me as if he thought I’d fall at any moment, leaving Rafa to attempt an escape while he was distracted. Carlos made a gesture and spat out a word, and she froze in place as if time had stopped.

He turned back to us and, in the light, I saw a smear of dried blood on his forehead and long streamers of it stiffening the black fabric of his shirt from collar to waist. In the dark it had been invisible, but here it was plain. “You look like death,” I said.

Carlos bowed his head with an ironic smile, just out of Quinton’s sight as my lover said, “You look worse.”

“Do I?” I glanced at my arms, but the left was fine. The right was covered in small nicks and filthy scrapes that had bled and dried closed again already. My shins below my skirt were covered in worse scrapes and gouges where the stones of the broken church had cut me while they fell and my outfit was filthy and ripped in several places. I’d never taken that kind of damage in a temporacline before. I already felt weak and uncertain, and the sight didn’t improve my sense of being barely in the normal world at all.

But Quinton was looking at my face, not my body. He smoothed a warm hand over my cheek and forehead and into my hair. “You look like you’ve been in a wreck.”

I gave a rough laugh. “A ruin. But we survived.”

Quinton finally turned back to look at Carlos. His eyes widened, but he said nothing.

Carlos raised an eyebrow, but I noticed he was leaning back against the wall with more of his weight than usual. His skin was waxy, not merely pale, and he seemed smaller, thinner, or diminished. In his own lifetime, he must have seemed a giant. Now he just looked tall, broad shouldered, and worn down.

I watched his chest for a moment, just to be sure he was still breathing. He was, so the odd change in his state of existence was still operating.

“We should adjourn this discussion to a more comfortable location,” he said.

“I don’t think I can make it up the stairs yet,” I said.

“There used to be a salon in this house,” Carlos said, and led the way out of the entry and through one of the other doors at the back. The door opened into a room that ran from the front to the back of the house and had long windows on both sides to let the air through. The room was clean, if sparsely furnished, and we settled into a pair of couches that sat at right angles near the back, overlooking the small garden through tall, Moorish arches. The heat of the day reflected off the stone wall that held back the hillside and the house above to flood the room with the scent of orange trees, jasmine, and bougainvillea. It might have seemed romantic and pleasant if I hadn’t been exhausted, bloodied, and woozy. I snuggled against Quinton, feeling unseasonably cold. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close, unknowingly repeating the gesture Carlos had made earlier. It gave me a chill.

“Now . . . will one of you tell me what happened? Harper bolted out of here as if you were dying.”

“I was and would have been gone from this world if she hadn’t arrived when she did. She would have sacrificed herself to save me and I was almost thoughtless enough to accept that offer.”

I felt Quinton bridle and start to lunge for him at Carlos’s implication, but he fell back as the necromancer held up his hands.

“I said almost. Your spouse-in-soul is remarkable and only a very great fool would allow her to leave the world for so little good purpose. I am no fool and I don’t value friends so cheaply. More immediately, I have an idea of what the Kostní Mágové are building, but not the specific details. Tell me what you have discovered about bones. . . .”

Quinton still felt tense and the color of his aura shifted as he spoke from a red-tinged anxiety to a softer blue color shot with occasional sparks of red, orange, and olive. He repeated the information he’d discussed with me earlier and Carlos was able to tease more specifics from him by precise questions based on knowledge neither Quinton nor I had had. When they were done, Carlos was pale and a sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead. He looked ill and I felt equally terrible, huddling against Quinton’s side.

Rafa stepped into the room and stood still in a shadow, barely visible to me from the corner of my eye, but in Carlos’s line of sight.

Quinton scowled at Carlos. “What’s wrong with you?”

Carlos swayed in his seat. His voice was low and barely audible when he replied. “Mortality. By a quirk of blood, I seem to be temporarily . . . human again.” All remaining color drained from his face and his eyes rolled back a moment before he collapsed across the sofa, unconscious.

I felt the edge of the same blurry nothingness pulling over me, too, and fought against it, unwilling to leave Quinton alone.

Quinton stared, appalled, between Carlos and me, his mouth open in protest. “No . . .” He fixed on me with a beseeching expression. “You didn’t. . . . Say you didn’t.”

I tried to speak, but my voice failed and I had to nod, falling over the edge of irresistible unconsciousness as I felt him clutch my shoulders and let out a cry of despair.

The day and night faded to bad dreams and I woke up in the bright, warm morning, disoriented to find myself in bed instead of still on the sofa in the salon. Quinton was sitting on a chair near the bed, watching me. I felt more groggy than seemed reasonable until I remembered that I was operating about a quart low on blood—which will make anyone a bit slower than normal.

I hauled myself up in bed to sit leaning against the wall and take a look at my watch. “Ugh, why am I still in bed at ten a.m.?”

“Staying up until three a.m. can have that effect,” Quinton said. “How are you?”

“Confused.”

“About . . . ?”

“Why you’re sitting over there like I have a highly contagious disease.”

“I admit to being a little nervous.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know what happens next.”

“Next? I think the plan was to figure out what the bad guys are up to and then blow town before they take another shot at any of us.”

“OK. Now I’m the one who’s confused.”

“About what?”

Quinton hesitated. “Last night . . . I had the strong impression . . . that you . . . had let Carlos bite you. Maybe more . . .”

I stared at him with my mouth hanging open, blinking like a stunned owl. “Oh. . . . Uh . . . That’s not quite how it went.”

“But—”

I put up one hand to stop him from saying more. “No, no. Just listen. This is difficult. Amélia told me—not as such, but let’s just go with that in lieu of a longer explanation—anyhow, she told me that Carlos needed help and passed on the impression that the situation was desperate. So I raced out of here—as I’m sure you remember—and up to the Carmo Convent. Those are the ruins—”

“The church ruins you can see from Rossio, or from the castle if you face west,” Quinton said.

“Yes,” I agreed, nodding. “Those ruins. It wasn’t an easy or pleasant job, but I found him there. He was dying.”

“He’s the undead. How could he be dying?”

I gave him a stern look. “Don’t split semantic hairs with me right now. The upshot is that whatever it is that passes for life in him was almost gone. And I didn’t stop to think about the ramifications or complications of the situation—I didn’t even consider that we need him if we’re going to figure out what your father and the Kostní Mágové are up to and stop them. It didn’t occur to me. I just did what I could to keep a friend from dying.”

“You let him bite you.”

“No. I pretty much had to force him. But that was all—just . . . blood. And something happened that I have no explanation for—and I’m sure Carlos doesn’t, either—but whatever it was, it changed his state of existence, at least temporarily. This thing seems to have been a one-way expression only. I’m not affected, except to be a bit anemic. From something Carlos told me while we were trying to get out of the ruins, he’s not a vampire in the same mode as, say, Cameron is. He may not even function quite the same way, but for whatever reason, I’m not blood-bound or turning into a vampire or anything dramatic or treacherous like that. I’m still just me, running about a quart low, but otherwise fine.”

“Quite fine, from what I see.”

We both turned our startled attention to the bedroom doorway where Carlos stood, backlit by the morning sun through the sitting room windows. I couldn’t see his face in the glare, but the light cutting his silhouette made him appear reed-thin.

Quinton jumped up from his chair and stood between us, and it occurred to me that I was still sitting up in bed with only a sheet lying loose across my legs. I considered pulling it up over my exposed breasts and then thought it was not only too late, but a ridiculous gesture, given the company.

Carlos turned his gaze aside. “I beg your pardon. I knocked, but no one replied.” He took a step into the room and turned deliberately to look only at Quinton, giving me a clear view of his profile, but putting his back to the rest of the room. He looked less filthy, tattered, and exhausted than the last time I’d seen him, but still tired and less kempt than I was used to. His voice and presence still left an impression on the Grey, but with less intensity, as if his paranormal volume had been turned down. “I believe we left a conversation unfinished last night,” he said.

Quinton scowled at him. “You’re up.”

“Indeed.”

“In daylight.”

“It comes as a surprise to me, as well. Do you wish to discuss the phenomenon right now?”

Quinton thought about it. “No.”

“Good. We have many other things to talk about.” He turned and left the bedroom.

I slipped out of the bed and snatched up Quinton’s nearest shirt on the way to the bathroom. An uncomfortable tension buzzed in my chest and I felt a little light-headed. I hoped nothing unpleasant was about to erupt between Quinton and Carlos.

Throughout my shower, the vibrating discomfort in my chest continued, easing a little, but not entirely going away. I got dressed, annoyed that my jeans were still unwashed and too filthy to put on, so I was stuck once again in a dress that had only the saving grace of pockets. I saw no sign of Quinton in the room, but the sitting room door was now closed, and even through the thick plastered walls I could hear a murmur of male voices.

I’m a snoop by nature and I couldn’t resist putting my ear to the old-fashioned keyhole to discover what they were saying.

“. . . My girlfriend!”

“Your wife, more properly. But the relationship does not make her your property and I did nothing to influence her. If you imagine that I would, you do her considerable insult and no less to me.”

“I know what the effects of surviving a vampire’s bite are.”

Carlos laughed and this time it shook the floor. “You know nothing. Most of those who give us blood go their way with no more effect upon them than a slight euphoria. Those who succumb to the Bliss bear a mark—that is how we know them. I assume you’ve searched every inch of her body looking for it. . . .”

Quinton said nothing.

“You found nothing because there is nothing to find. She is not my thrall. I have no call upon her beyond our mutual respect.”

It was very quiet, and I thought they’d left, but in a moment, Quinton spoke again.

“You said it was risky—what she did for you. But if you respect her, why did you let her do it? Why didn’t you stop?”

“I did stop, though I admit it was difficult. In extremity and offered rescue, it was hard to temper the drive to survive with the knowledge that her life lay in my hands. And I did not ‘let her’ save me. Blaine made that decision for herself. You made that decision once for me, also. Did you think I would forget that you didn’t leave me to die in a fire?”

“That was Cameron’s doing.”

“Not alone. You don’t credit the breadth of your own compassion.”

Quinton scoffed. “For vampires? Your lot nearly killed me a dozen times.”

“Not ‘my lot,’ but all the others, and for her. It’s what makes you a terrible spy—you feel and cannot resist acting on that empathy—and it makes you her perfect mate. But it allows you to know—or to imagine—too much, which is why you want to kill me for touching her,” Carlos added with a chuckle.

“That’s not true. . . .” The rattling discomfort in my chest fell apart.

“It is. But, as I am useful, you have no choice but to tolerate my presence a little longer. I know what your father wants.”

“An invisible company of invincible, undead spies—a whole department’s worth of Sergeyevs to bring Europe down. I know.”

“For how long?”

“I only really put it together last night. Harper saw my dad’s project in action yesterday and we all saw the boxes at the bone church. Harper recognized the master bone mage from last night—we saw him just before that . . . drachen thing fell apart down the hill yesterday. It was just like the one at the bone church. The ossuaries that have been vandalized, the places my father has been, and what we all saw two nights ago . . . I knew there was some piece of information I had that made it all fit, made my suspicions true, but I hadn’t been able to tease it up to the surface. Now I know. That organ . . . the bones . . . You said at the time that you knew the man who made it. You said that you knew this bone mage when he was an apprentice and how would you if you didn’t study under the same master? It all comes together. The Kostní Mágové promised my father the secret of packing ghosts and monsters into boxes so they can be moved around like furniture and that’s what he wants, but there’s something else that has to come first—something they want and have convinced my father he wants, too—something that will burn Europe to the ground. You know what that is.”

“They must have their apocalypse—their dead in legions unburied, an endless sea of bones. O Inferno Dragão will give them that. And then, we all die.”