"No." He gently pushed me off his lap and started gathering up his clothes. Since I didn"t want to be caught standing around naked and sweaty, I did the same.
"Why?" I asked, fingering my shredded underwear and wondering if I could staple it back together. "It sounds like the ideal solution to me. I"d be immortal again, and you said the females don"t have to drink blood."
"You"re not doing it and that"s the end of the discussion." Paen turned his back to me as he pulled on his shirt.
I ground my teeth and pulled my jeans on without underwear (something I disliked, but I didn"t have much of a choice). "You"re being high-handed again. I really don"t appreciate that."
"What did you find out about my statue?"
"And now you"re changing the subject."
"What did you find out about my statue?"
I finished dressing, thinking several loud thoughts that he summarily ignored. "Fine, I"ll talk about the statue, but don"t think I"ll forget about this. I"m thirty-three now-I want to be immortal while I still look halfway decent. Pilar had the statue last. I"m sure he"s hidden it somewhere nearby."
"Pilar?" A frown wrinkled Paen"s forehead. "Where is he?"
I pulled my sweater on and reached for my shoes. "Somewhere in the area, according to Kelsey the seer. Edinburgh, most likely."
"I thought you said he had your statue. He has both?"
Paen turned around, dressed, and watched as I slipped on my loafers. I gave him a brief recap of my conversation with the seer, ending with the question of why Pilar would want both statues.
"Unless," I said, stopping as I tried to fit together two pieces of the puzzle that didn"t want to mesh."Unless the two statues are the same?" Paen asked, clearly thinking the same thing I was.
"Yeah, but how can that be? One is of a bird. We all saw it-it was definitely a falcon of some sort. Your statue is of a monkey.
They don"t look even remotely alike."
"You saw the statue as entombed, confined in a dark place," he said slowly.
I nodded.
"And the seer told you the statue was hidden from sight, protected while it slept."
"Yes. But the statue I had wasn"t hidden from sight, and it wasn"t protected, unless you call a shoe-box protection, and I don"t."
"What if the Jilin G.o.d was held within the falcon statue?" he asked, his brow still wrinkled with puzzlement.
"Of course," I said, enlightenment finally dawning. "It"s inside the bird! That"s why I saw the bird statue when I tried to scry the location of the Jilin G.o.d. Now it makes sense why Pilar would do anything to get it-he must have known the Jilin statue was inside the bird, and wanted it for his own purposes."
Paen pulled on his long black coat. "Let"s go get it back."
"What, right now?" I glanced at the clock. The trip back from the seer had taken me twice as long to return by bus as the trip out. It was now less than an hour to deep night. "I don"t know exactly where he is. It may take us a while to track him down."
"The sooner we get started, the sooner we can retrieve that statue," Paen said, holding the door open. "You don"t need to come if you are too tired."
"No, I"m fine," I said, getting my jacket and purse. "You"re right. The sooner we have it, the sooner your father"s debt can be paid, and the easier I"ll rest. Let"s go kick some whatever-Pilar-is booty!"
"You are a strange woman," Paen said as we hurried down the stairs.
"Why, because I"m proactive and independent? Because I take pride in my work ethic? Because I"ll move heaven and h.e.l.l to see a job done?"
"I was referring to the fact that you are willing to face a potentially lethal opponent armed with nothing more than a purse and a PDA.".
I smiled at Paen as he held open the door at the bottom of the stairs, brushing my fingers across his jaw as I pa.s.sed. "I have a secret weapon."
His eyebrows rose in silent question.
"I have you," I said, smiling, full of confidence. Things were looking so rosy for us-we"d worked out the worst of the relationship kinks, Paen"s statue was within our grasp, and I was sure I would be able to talk him into making me a Moravian to regain immortality. I still had a longer than normal life span, but that wasn"t going to cut it when there was Paen to spend an eternity with. "All in all, things are coming together nicely. Nothing can stop us once we put our heads together on it."
I really wish someone would stop me from making those sorts of generalizations. They"re almost always wrong.
We found Pilar the second hour of deep night. We"d spent the last two hours trolling through the city, following mostly my instincts on where Pilar was, but whenever we"d arrive at a location (nightclub, store, two cemeteries, an all-night McDonald"s, and Edinburgh Castle), we"d find he"d been there and left. Finally we lucked out and found Pilar at one of the oddities in Edinburgh-the Real Mary King"s Close, an underground historical site made up of a warren of several seventeenth-century closes (narrow lanes used as shortcuts that were "closed" in by surrounding multistoried buildings). It was reported to be one of the most haunted spots in Edinburgh, so several ghost-hunting groups and parapsychology devotees booked time in it at night.
We slipped in at the tail end of a ghost-hunting group and made it inside without anyone the wiser, following as the group walked down several levels until we were deep beneath the modern streets. Narrow white stone walls and uneven dirt floors made every whisper echo, so we were careful to be as silent as possible.
"Are you sure he"s here?" Paen asked me in a whisper as the group gathered around their excited leader in front of the remains of a store.
We clung to the shadows cast by reproduction seventeenth-century lighting to avoid being noticed. I rubbed my arms, understanding why people thought this area was haunted. The buildings in the close had been built over for a couple hundred years, but this part had been excavated and restored to what were pretty realistic historic conditions. It was dark, damp, cold, and smelly.
I shivered as cold fingers of air touched my neck, then closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment. "I think so. It feels like he"s here. I think he"s"-I turned, my eyes still closed, trusting my elf instincts to guide me-"that way."
We waited for the ghost chasers to hurry off for their ghostly hot spots before turning in the opposite direction.
"Which one?" Paen asked as we came to a narrow alley with three entrances. I ignored the door marked MR. CHESNEY"S DWELLING and entered the sawmaker"s workshop next to it. The room was empty of everything but a few shelves and hooks on the walls, but a partially opened wooden door led to a room beyond. I pointed and started toward it, but Paen pulled me behind him, giving me a look that warned me not to challenge him.
I stuck my tongue out at the back of his head and followed closely on his heels.
"... took it away from her when she was trapped in the web and hid it. Now I need someone to go in and get it for me. You"re Fae, you should be able to retrieve it."
A couple of soft raps answered the man"s voice that emerged from the workshop.
"The curse means nothing in this instance-once a faery, always a faery, even if Oriens did turn you into a poltergeist. It"s a simple enough job-all you have to do is find the statue where I left it in the beyond, and bring it out to me."
Three sharp raps followed. Paen sidled around the door to peer into the room. I peeked over his shoulder, shivering again as the cold seeped out of the room and straight into my bones. Pilar stood in the middle of the room, his hands on his hips as he faced a familiar poltergeist.
"Don"t be a fool-you know I was born of dark powers. I can enter and leave the beyond, but I have no power there, so you"re going to have to be the one to fetch the statue. Just don"t c.o.c.k it up! I want something done right for a change."
Whoa. It doesn"t sound like he has the statue. At least I know I didn"t lose it. He must have taken it without me knowing when I was trapped between realities, hauled it farther into the beyond, then not been able to get it out again.
Paen gave a mental shrug. However it got there, it"s to our benefit that he can"t retrieve it easily.
A couple more knocks answered Pilar.
"Don"t be foolish," he snarled at the poltergeist. "It"s not that easy to lift a curse, you know. The offer is simple-you bring the statue out to me, and I"ll find a Charmer to lift the curse. Take it or leave it."
It sounds as if he is having difficulties finding someone to bring it out, Paen said.
I"m surprised he thinks a poltergeist can. Everyone knows beings born of the darkness have no powers in the beyond.Reuben rapped out an answer that had Pilar snorting, "No. No one else knows where that half-breed elf was. It"s safe enough until you retrieve it."
If Reuben was cursed to this state, it means he wasn"t born into it. It"s probably entirely likely that he would have his full powers in the beyond.
I suppose, although there wouldn"t be much he could do there even with them. I"ve never heard of a faery who was cursed, but I don"t get around much in the Fae world. Regardless, what are we going to do now?
Find out just where it is so you can get it yourself. Paen stepped into the room, his wide shoulders filling the narrow doorway. "Lost the statue, did you? That"s too bad. Sam would like it back."
Life suddenly took on a very abstract quality. In the fraction of a second after Paen"s words were spoken, Pilar spun around to find himself face-to-face with an angry vampire. But what he did next took us both by surprise. Rather than attacking Paen, or challenging him, or even laughing a mocking, superior laugh at Paen"s bravado, he did something entirely different. He killed me.
Chapter 16.
A voice screamed in the small, closed room, echoing over and over and over again, a horrible sound that made my brain hurt. It was only after the screaming stopped and Pilar stepped back from me that I noticed he held a knife in his hands. A knife covered in blood right to the hilt.
Warmth seeped into my sweater as an odd gurgling, rasping noise seemed to fill my ears. Paen roared a curse and tore off the poltergeist from where he was clinging, just as if he was nothing more than a troublesome burr. Reuben went flying across the room, hitting the wall with a solid thunk. Paen looked startled for a moment as one of Reuben"s arms remained in his grasp, but he threw down the limb as he lunged for me, his beautiful silver eyes almost black.
Beyond him, Pilar fled the room, an injured Reuben crawling out after him, leaving a trail of oily black blood and apports.
"They"re getting away," I tried to say, but something was wrong with me, something was very wrong. I couldn"t speak, and my brain apparently had shifted into slow motion again. My legs buckled and I fell backward against the wall, Paen catching me before I could hit the floor. Paen?
Dear G.o.d, don"t speak. Don"t move, Sam. It"ll be all right. It"s a lot of blood but I"ll stop the bleeding somehow.
His eyes were so full of horror, they made mine blur with tears. I tried to touch his face but my arms didn"t seem to work. Paen?
I"ll call Finn. We"ll get you help. There"s a hospital nearby. Don"t leave me, Sam, just don"t leave me. Swear you won"t leave me.
I won"t leave, I started to say, but stopped because it wasn"t true. The room telescoped, Paen at one end and me at the other, moving farther and farther away from each other until it seemed we were at opposite ends of a long tunnel.
Paen, where did you go? What"s happening? Why can"t I move?
Sam, d.a.m.n you, don"t leave me! There were tears in his voice that spoke in my head, tears and anguish and pain so deep it cut through my soul. Hang on to me, Sam. Stay with me. Don"t let go.
I don"t seem to be able to...
I drifted backward, as if my astral body had gone flying again, but this was different. Sheer terror filled me as I finally understood what was happening. I struggled to keep from drifting, but I was powerless. Paen! I don"t want to go! Please don"t let me die!
I love you! I don"t want to leave you!
I won"t let you go, sweetheart, his voice answered in my head, distant but calm, rea.s.suring. Forgive me, Sam.
Forgive you for what? I asked, sobbing tears of agony. I wanted to scream and yell and fight, railing against the cruelty of fate.
Now that I had found Paen, now that he had accepted me and we had a life in front of us-for however long-it wasn"t right that I should be torn from him. Paen! Please! Help me!
Forgive me, my love.
Pain blossomed deep within me, a horrible, rending pain unlike anything I"d felt before, and for a moment I was thrilled to feel anything, because it meant I wasn"t quite dead yet. Paen"s silver eyes burned into mine a second before his teeth flashed and a streak of pain shot through my chest, a strange lethargy washing over me. He was feeding off me, drinking my blood, taking into himself everything I was, and had, and ever would have, leaving me... empty.
He dropped me, let the hollow sh.e.l.l of me flounder and sink into a black abyss, and with one last heartrending sob of sorrow, I was no more.
Sam?
Hmm?
How do you feel?
I"m not sure. Am I sleeping?
Yes. Wake up now.
All right.
I opened my eyes. We were still in the storage room beneath the streets of Edinburgh, faint light coming in through the opened doorway. An odd wind seemed to be howling somewhere in the distance, as if a storm was building. Beneath me, the ground was wet and sticky with blood. My blood.
"I"m not dead?" My voice sounded choked, hoa.r.s.e and rough.
Don"t speak out loud, not yet. Give your body time to heal the injury on your neck.
Memory returned to me. Pilar stabbed me?
Slashed your neck. He cut your jugular, d.a.m.n near decapitating you, otherwise I would have rushed you to the hospital.
But there was no time, Sam, no time. You were dying. You were leaving me and I couldn"t stop it.
The wind picked up, its shrieks painful to my ears.
But I"m alive now, I said, still confused about what happened. So much of it was a horrible blur in my mind.
Paen said nothing, just watched me with a face that bore so much guilt, I wanted to weep for him.
I held out an arm. It was shaky and covered with blood, but it was my arm. See? I"m here. I"m alive. I"m ... I stopped, horror crawling over my skin as I realized what was wrong. The wind that roared so loudly it hurt my ears wasn"t coming from outside... It came from within me.
From the place my soul used to reside.
"Sweetheart, if you keep trying to scream, you"re going to bring the ghost hunters down on us, and you really do need to rest in order to heal up that neck wound."
The horrible rasping, squeaking noise that was my attempt to shriek in horror stopped. I slumped back against the wall, panting with the effort and stress. "Where"s my soul?" I croaked.
Pain darkened his eyes, pain and regret and pity. For me. "I"m sorry, Sam. It was the only way I could save you. I had no choice. It was either turn you or let you go, and I couldn"t do that. You may hate me for the rest of your life, but at least you"re alive. And I swear to you, I"ll find your soul and restore it to you."
"Turn me?" My voice was still hoa.r.s.e, but growing a bit stronger. "You turned me? You made me a female Moravian?"