Chapter Twenty-One
As soon as the door closed behind us, Remy embraced the man. “Setreg, it’s been too long.”
Remy was tall, but Setreg had several inches on him in height, and nearly a foot on him in girth.
No wonder Setreg had needed a custom-made door.
He probably couldn’t fit through anything else.
No surprise, his house had high ceilings, too.
The room we’d entered also had a large fireplace with big hammock-style chairs in front of it.
Mosaic artwork added subtle shades of bronze, black, and lapis blue to the sand-colored walls, and a large black table in the center of the room seemed to spill water from its edges like an infinite pool.
“Years,” Setreg said as he hugged Remy back. “I have missed you, my friend.”
“And I’ve missed you,” Remy said. “But I’m afraid we only have minutes to spare.”
Setreg clapped Remy on the back. “That’s long enough for a drink.”
A tall, beautiful woman entered the room. She wore a sleeveless white sarong that bared one shoulder, and she was carrying a cask the size of a keg. From the muscles flexing beneath her fawn-colored skin, it was heavy. She set it down and then laughed when she saw Remy.
“Aha! We tempt death indeed.”
“Malina.” Remy inclined his head at the bronze-haired woman. “I am honored by your shelter.”
Her snort made me like her. “Your pretty words hold no value here, Byrne, but your presence is still welcome.”
Remy nodded in my direction. “I can’t tell you her name, but we need to get out of the city at once.”
I tensed. Why couldn’t he tell them my name? Didn’t he trust these people? If not, why were we here?
I settled on: “Hi.” That should be harmless enough.
Malina broke the seal on the cask’s nozzle, and fetched glasses as big as beer steins. Golden liquid filled each of them until she twisted the nozzle closed. Malina kept one glass, and gave one to Setreg, one to Remy, and one to me.
“To glory!” she said, raising her glass.
“Glory!” Remy and Setreg echoed.
“Glory,” I murmured, thinking I’d prefer “safety.”
We all drank. I forced myself not to spit out my first eye-watering swallow. What was in this? Liquid fire?
“Smooth,” I managed to say with a choked cough.
Setreg laughed and clapped me on the back. It almost made some of that hellish liquid come back up through my nose. No wonder they’d saved this for a near-death occasion. It made the prospect of eternal oblivion preferable to drinking more of it.
“Here.” Remy took my glass. “Viandovian mead can be challenging for those unused to it.”
With that, Remy began draining his mug. Setreg started drinking his faster, too.
So did Malina. Soon, it was a three-way race.
Setreg finished first, slamming his glass down in victory.
The mug must’ve been made of sturdy stuff, because it didn’t break.
Setreg swayed a little as he watched Remy and Malina finish their drinks.
I didn’t know how Setreg managed to stay upright at all.
I felt seriously buzzed after only one sip.
Remy and Malina finished their glasses in a tie. With a laugh, she slammed her mug down next to her husband’s.
“You have been gone too long, Byrne! You would have beaten me had you visited more often.”
“Who says I’m finished?” Remy replied, picking up my nearly full glass.
Setreg’s eyes gleamed. “Two draconos says you can’t finish that without passing out.”
Remy flashed a wicked grin. “Done.”
I shook my head. Different dimensions, magical danger … none of it mattered. Men would still have drinking contests.
Remy started draining my glass. At one-quarter empty, a vein bulged in his temple. When it was half-empty, Remy planted his feet as if the ground was suddenly moving beneath him. At three-quarters finished, sweat rolled down his cheeks.
“Ha!” Setreg said. “Stop while you’re still conscious!”
Remy kept swallowing. The last of that golden liquid disappeared down his throat. He slammed the glass down to cheers from Setreg and Malina.
I rolled my eyes. So much for our leaving at once. Remy now had to grab on to Setreg just to stay upright.
“I hope your friends have somewhere safe to let you sleep this off?”
“No need,” Remy said in a very slurred voice. “I’ll be fine in”—loud hiccup—“two minutes.”
“Sure you will,” I said with heavy sarcasm. He’d looked less messed up after the Beast had mauled him. “In the meantime, maybe ask if you can use their shower? You’re coated in blood.”
Remy waved that off. “The river will wash it away.”
He really was drunk. “You want to go swimming?”
Another wave. “The kathilhan will do most of the swimming.”
Was this more drunk talk? “What’s a kathilhan?”
“Orion’s version of a whale,” Remy said with another hiccup.
Setreg sighed. “That’s dangerous even for you, my friend.”
Remy shook his head. “No faster way to my tower. We need to be in it by lightbreak.”
My stomach lurched. He wasn’t drunk-babbling. Remy really was intending to do something with a whale.
Setreg sighed again. “I’ll summon one now.”
“Wait,” I said, but Setreg was already out the door.
I gave Malina a fraught look. “Stop him!”
Her shrug was graceful for someone who needed to hold on to the edge of a chair for balance. “I cannot. We owe Byrne our lives. If this is his wish, we shall do it.”
Great. I was the only sober person in a room full of supernatural drunks, and Remy wanted to do something with a whale that even they thought was dangerous.
“Remy,” I said in my most reasonable tone, “you’re not in the best frame of mind. Why don’t you wait to decide—”
“We can’t wait,” he cut me off. “Already, the city wakes. Soon, it will be too crowded to go to the river unnoticed.”
“Can’t you change what you look like, then?” I asked in a less reasonable tone. “Hollywood special effects artists do that all the time. Go magic yourself up a new face or something.”
“Wouldn’t be enough,” Remy replied. “Told you, my magic leaves a … distinctive residue. Most people here won’t recognize it, but if the right person did, it would be disastrous.”
I gave the nearby wall a longing glance. Banging my head against it suddenly sounded very appealing. “Is that why you made me recite that stuff about being your servant?”
“Setreg’s half Tuatha Dé Danann,” Remy replied. “Tuatha Dé Danann can’t lie.”
A man who couldn’t lie? That was more incredible than everything else I’d heard tonight.
“If you’re caught, Remy will get you out,” Malina said to me. “But my Setreg cannot leave with you. He has more loved ones than just me living in Orion.”
“And I won’t let anyone who Setreg cares for face my punishment,” Remy said in a resonant tone.
Then he looked at me. “That’s why Setreg can truthfully say that a servant he’s never seen before told him I’d summoned him to my hotel.
Thus, Setreg and his family are innocent of any crimes these ‘servants’ commit, since their guilt would be my responsibility. ”
Manipulative wordplay. Figures Remy would be a master at it. So would someone who couldn’t outright lie, like Setreg.
“Unless whoever stops us recognizes you,” I pointed out.
Remy’s gaze turned colder than dry ice. “No one would live long enough to repeat that they’d recognized me.”
Murderous yet deeply honorable. Once again, Remy both repelled and enticed me.
I sighed. “So, what are we doing with a whale, now?”
Remy smiled. “Heard of the biblical story of Jonah?”
I had, and he couldn’t be serious.…
His expression said that he was.
“No,” I said. “Hell no, in fact.”
“You saw the rivers leading into the city,” Remy replied. “Most people use sea turtles for transport on them, but those are too public. The kathilhan will be private.”
“Oh, yeah. Getting eaten by a whale is very private.”
Remy ignored my sarcasm. “Once we’re beneath my tower, I’ll pull us through its foundations.”
“What part of ‘hell no’ did you not understand?”
Remy took my arm. His grip was surprisingly strong, and he hadn’t stumbled on his way over to me. Come to think of it, he’d stopped slurring his words, too.
“How are you over being drunk already?”
His brows went up. “You saw me heal from multiple deadly slashes, and this is what surprises you?”
I hadn’t expected Remy’s healing abilities to include supernaturally sobering up, but of course they did.
Remy stared down at me. “I know Orion. Trust me when I say that this is our safest option.”
My teeth ground. I did trust him, even if I wanted no part of this. “How will being inside your hotel make us safe?” Yes, I was stalling, but it was still a valid question. “I saw monster-sized dragons flying over the city. Can’t one of them bust in?”
Remy’s grip didn’t loosen. “First, when you’re inside my tower, it’s the same as being on my lands. Second, those dragons aren’t the ones you need to worry about.”
I snorted. “They looked pretty scary to me.”
“They’re pescatarian. Fish is their favorite meat,” he added, in case I hadn’t known what that word meant. “They’re also nonaggressive. Oh, if you attack one, it might kill you in self-defense, but it’s more likely to flee.”
“So which dragons are the dangerous ones?” I asked, but I was pretty sure I knew.
Remy’s cold smile confirmed it. “The ones that look human.”
Setreg opened the door. “The kathilhan is ready.”
Remy drew his hood down over his face. “Malina, your hospitality is always treasured. I hope to see you again soon.”
“As do I,” she said. “Servant, I wish you good fortune.”
Servant. Well, it was the only name she’d been given for me. “Thanks, Malina, and same to you.”
Remy tugged my hood back down, too. Right, it was whale time. How had this become my life?
We went outside. I was surprised by how much lighter it was. Now I didn’t need the floating blue orbs to see. I glanced up, but didn’t see the sun peeking over the horizon. Wait, did this place have the same sun we did? Or did it have another one?
The river wasn’t far, but it was out in the open. Suddenly I understood Remy’s need for haste. More people were leaving their condos, and more snails were buzzing by on the streets. It might still be early, but this neighborhood was definitely waking up.
Setreg led us toward a group of trees at the river’s edge.
When we got to the other side of them, there was the barest stretch of sand to stand on before rocks edged the water.
On the other side of those rocks, about two dozen feet away, a whale breached the water’s surface.
The river must be very deep, because the whale was the size of a city bus.
“Come,” Remy said, and pulled me toward the water.
I dug my heels in. The huge snails had modifications to their shells to mimic passenger seats, so I’d thought the whale had to have some form of “seating” on it, too.
But no. It was just a big damn whale, purple-colored instead of gray, with its massive mouth open as if about to be fed a delicious snack.
Fuck that! I wasn’t about to be its cheat meal.
“Come on.” Remy’s voice was steel. “Get into the water.”
“I’m allergic to drowning,” I snapped.
“You couldn’t drown if you tried.” Something in Remy’s tone made me stare at him instead of the whale. Was he talking about my thwarted teen suicide attempt?
I looked at the whale again. Its teeth were flat and nubby. That meant it swallowed tiny fish whole, much like whales did in my world. So, it wouldn’t tear at me like a shark. That left drowning as the main danger, no matter that Remy obviously bet on the Beast preventing that like it had before.
“Tell me you’ve done something magical to make this safe.”
Remy snorted. “You think I’d leave this to chance?”
I guess he wouldn’t.
His fingers tightened on mine. “Trust me.”
I hoped those weren’t the last words I ever heard.
Remy and I went into the water. Almost immediately, the bottom sloped and I was in over my head. The water was cold, and my waterlogged cloak now felt like it weighed fifty pounds. I shrugged it off as we swam over to the whale’s wide-open jaws.
We were really going to do this, weren’t we?
I glanced behind me. Setreg was still on the shore. He waved as if to say, So long, suckers!
“Take a deep breath,” Remy said.
I gave him a look. “If this kills me, I’ll haunt you just so I can bitch at you forever.”
His smile was reassuring. No one could look so smug right before willingly letting himself get eaten, right? “Haunting me won’t be necessary. Now, deep breath, Raine.”
I did.
Remy pulled me below the waves. I felt a rush of water before the bone-chilling sensation of a trap closing around me as the whale swallowed us.