Chapter 26
“We didn’t hear a thing,” Wrenfeldt repeated.
Despite his bulk, he looked strangely small on his knees; Lukas rarely required such flagrant measures, but the instant he appeared both dogsbody and understudy had assumed the ancient posture of repentance.
“Master, I swear, we did not hear. She simply…she’s fast, like a sanguinant. There was nothing we could do.”
“Nothing,” Hardison piped up. The boy’s pulse was hummingbird-quick; both men reeked of fear. “We was at our posts, master. She just came out of nowhere, bam!”
One of the bedposts was bent, the mark of slim fingers printed deep, just where she would grasp. He touched the indentations, gently. “How very odd.”
The Gift granted much, and a daywalker’s blood was powerful. The seals had been still intact but humming unhappily, the door locked. Her scent dyed the room, powerfully soothing, but the absence of its font taunted the animal at the bottom of consciousness.
Not to mention the rest of him.
I’ll be good. Pleading, tense, obviously distressed. Please don’t lock me up in here.
Would she have lingered, had he agreed? Lukas did not think so.
Yet he could not fault her, young and frightened, all that stubborn bravery and defiance contained in such a small frame.
Far more important than fault was swift action.
Very quickly both the thrall and the addiction would punish him—as if he needed any further spur other than deep aversion to the return of calcification.
Hardison was still gabbling. “—just vanished. We ran out into the driveway, but she was gone. Not a sign, Master. We checked the door, locked tight, and Thomas said—”
“Thank you, Hardison. Now be quiet.” For if the boy did not, Lukas might simply break both him and the dogsbody, then every other servant in this empty shell. Robbed of its beating heart, the building was useless; his prize now wandered the night.
When he stilled, turning inward and filling his lungs with a soft slow inhale freighted with her scent, the fury almost, almost retreated.
But not quite. The dogsbody and understudy had crept down to the saferoom door, had they?
Verifying she was gone? But neither could alter or affect the seals, and though she was exhibiting a portion of fledgling strength, the reinforced door and multiple bar-locks should have been more than enough to keep her contained.
The seals would not harm his leman, especially with his own blood fueling the Gift; it was just barely possible she had discovered some way through from the protected side.
Even so, the door should have stopped her—unless Lukas was mistaken, which could be so.
He could not rule out his own ineffectualness.
What a bare, cheerless room. What had she felt, standing here, iron softening under her slim fingers? He was surprised she had not torn the bed apart in a fit of pique, but such was not her temperament.
No, she was altogether more deliciously complex and resourceful, his beautiful, evanescent Beatrice.
The greisoul. Had she been wearing it? Ah, he remembered. Tucked in a back pocket of those denims she liked so much—but this was not among the item’s many uses, not that he was aware of.
Both dogsbody and understudy were still, breathing hoarsely, pulses absolutely uncontrolled. Their fear was not to be soothed, although he supposed he should be grateful her flight had been so swift as to preclude any damage from ill-conceived notions of trapping or delaying their master’s prize.
His inward attention fastened on a soft, nearly imperceptible tugging.
It was not the bright crimson thread of an open bloodtrail, as he had followed to a cheap lodging-house—no, motel, that was the proper modern word.
Yet it was stronger, for she was his bonded leman; even more importantly, she was his very own fledgling, the only one he had ever made.
And a Maker could always find their own.
Lukas turned, his gaze settling upon the pair of kneeling mortals.
“Burn this lair and the Andranov cover.” It was far from the first time he had been required to kill a just-acquired identity, and would not be the last. “Every servant here may have the bonuses already accrued, then go upon their way. As for you two…”
Hardison flinched, his gaze fixed on Lukas’s shoes.
Wrenfeldt had seen the effects of repelling incursions or taking new territory upon his employer’s clothing many a time, and so was presumably less fazed.
Besides, he had also watched ossification creep upon an ageless being with increasing speed and depth for how long, keeping his own counsel?
Such patience was middling-rare. Lukas reached several decisions at once. “How long have you been in my service, Thomas?”
“Quite some time, Master.” A faultless reply. “Almost two hundred years, I should think.”
Which was not very long, in the scheme of things—but it no doubt felt so to a mortal. “Faithfulness deserves a reward.” He watched several microscopic flickers of expression cross Wrenfeldt’s face; in a state of heightened emotion, even a century or so of practice could crack.
Before she had struck his accumulating chains, he might not have noticed or cared. Now Lukas found confirmation of unpleasant suspicions, but this was a small matter indeed. He could find a dogsbody with even less trouble than a fleeing fledgling.
Best to simply let all other pots boil elsewhere for a moment.
“Master…” Wrenfeldt’s shoulders bowed slightly, but even as he dropped his chin and stared at the floor, a flash of avaricious expectation crossed his broad face. Lightning, there and gone in less than a moment.
Enough. Come dawn she would be asleep, and the pull nonexistent until dusk. Lukas must move with some speed now, for if she chose the wrong bolthole to shelter in the effect could be disastrous. “Be about your work with good cheer. Keep yourselves in readiness; I shall make contact soon.”
He burst into mistform, streaming for the doorway. Hardison squeaked; Wrenfeldt elbowed him, quite ungently. “Shhh,” the dogsbody hissed.
It was all so much noise; Lukas knew what he must do. He could take a few moments with the desktop computer upstairs; unlike many other underlings, it did precisely as it was told, no less and certainly no more. Which was comforting in a way, yet could not be the entirety of service.
In any case, a few among his underlings would learn soon enough the folly of oathbreaking.
* * *
It had been some while since he used his speed in this fashion, gliding along terrain features as only a sanguinant could, avoiding mortal notice where possible.
A flash in the night, a cold breath upon the nape—in earlier days, the folk would know something was abroad in the night.
If any were so unfortunate as to be away from shelter, they might well spit a bean into the darkness, mutter a prayer to a favored god, or clutch at an amulet.
Nowadays, they simply hurried about their business, doing their best to forget the hint of something ancient and inimical crossing their path.
Northward the call led him, and he could even use the shining metal conveyances of this time, so long as they were proceeding in the correct direction and large enough to crouch upon. To do so conserved some of his strength, though he could—and would—not stop until his prey was run to ground.
Yet it was fortunate she had chosen to flee thus.
He had an inkling of where his wayward prize would be wending, since certain matters weighed so heavily upon her mind.
Lukas leaned into the howling wind of transit, snow and icy rain ignored as they soaked tattered clothing, velocity combing his hair.
The intimation became certainty as the night grew old, and though the thrall mounted deep in his bones and the fact of her absence turned from shock to rising torment, he still had occasion to be grateful.
Dawn found him parallel to the freeway, since little traffic was moving in the direction he wished and the terrain had begun to look familiar indeed.
Old hills which had once been mountains glowered; the call shifted slightly before fading all at once as the sun’s fiery rim lifted over the horizon, underlighting a heavy eastern pall of storm moving in.
She was asleep for the day, hopefully tucked into some safety—it was unlikely her true teeth had erupted, though the protection of mortality against sun-damage would be swiftly fading. Cloud cover would also help shield her.
The tide had turned, All Hallows was over.
Lukas had another means of finding her, and it lay in the bowels of a nearby peak clothed with bright patches of maple and birch still clinging to a few painted leaves, crowded by hemlock and spruce ready to withstand whatever blast would issue from the northeast.
His paced slowed, though not much. Yes, the terrain was familiar indeed.
He was thirty miles or so, as the crow flies, from the foothills of Noll Mountain.