The Lost Child Read online

I hugged her, and wondered if it would be for the last time.

  #

  As I made a cup of red berry tea , a favorite of my sister, I couldn’t help thinking about what Mathilda had said. Not about her and Mercedes; that was to be expected. Everyone loved Jolie and Emma, and Mathilda was right; if Rand and I weren’t doing this, then someone else would have shoved Jolie through the portal. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Odran or

  Dureau, Audrey or Adam were all planning something similar. What I thought about was what Mathilda had said about her arrival at Kinloch Kirk; Kinloch Kirk became my home when I had nowhere left to go . The same was true of me. Mine and Mathilda’s stories weren’t so different. The thought made me feel guilty because Mathilda had gone on to say; it would be very ungrateful of me to walk out now . Was I being ungrateful?

  But I had Rowan.

  In the midst of war, with so many lives at stake, and the Underworld poised to fall, it seemed stupid to act as if a single life—even that of a baby—mattered more.

  But it did. When you come down to it, a single life is all that matters, because they are all single lives. A great tragedy is defined by the number of individual lives lost. What separated us from the Luce’s of this world, was that we knew the value, not of life, but of a life.

  I stirred the tea, focusing on the movement of the spoon. It helped to concentrate on the process, on the little actions, anything to take my mind off everything that was going on. It also helped distract me from the fact that I was about to drug my sister. Th at was something I hadn’t expected to be doing when I woke up this morning.

  I found Jolie in the Entrance Hall, standing behind the guards, staring at the great wooden doors.

  “I brought you some tea.”

  Jolie didn’t seem to hear me, her eyes fixed on a point beyond those doors. “There’s movement outside.”

  “You think they’re coming now?”

  She shook her head. “Not yet. They won’t attack until the portal is secure in Faery and to do that, they’ll have to send troops all the way back to the beach at Kinloch Kirk to use the portal there. There’s a whole lot of toing and froing that’s got to take place. It’s giving us time.”

  Her gaze remained fixed and she spoke no more but her voice appeared in my head.

  Bryn, should I be using this time to evacuate everyone?

  Obviously she did n’t want the guards to overhear us. They’d all volunteered to stay, not one had been coerced, but Jolie’s doubts remained.

  You went over this. There was no other way.

  We could run , Jolie went on.

  Luce would track us down.

  We could split up. Go our separate ways. He can’t hunt down everyone.

  I snorted. Want to bet? Besides, if we split up, then the Underworld will have fallen.

  It’ll still fall, replied Jolie, nothing can change that. There’s just… there’s just too many of them and not enough of us.

  There have always been more of them than us and we’ve still prevailed. It takes belief and dedication and our people have it more than Luce’s do. We still have a chance, Jolie. If we fight, we still have a chance to defeat him.

  Jolie’s body relaxed a little from the tension in which she’d been holding herself. “Thanks, Bryn.”

  I knew what was going through her mind. At some point, she thought, we would have to say goodbye forever. That might be the most painful part. But I knew something she didn’t, and it was in my power to spare her the pain of that goodbye.

  “Drink your tea before it gets cold.”

  Thanks . Jolie smiled. “What would I do without you?”

  “You never have to worry about that.”

  As always, Mathilda was as good as her word. After the third or fourth sip, Jolie’s head dropped, and I caught the falling cup from her hand then supported her as she crumpled gently to the floor.

  Looking up, I found several of the guards watching. How was I going to explain this to them? I was saving my sister while leaving them to die… possibly. Although, at this point it might just look like an assassination attempt.

  “Okay, I know this must look weird to you…”

  The Captain of the Guard held up his hand. “No. We understand.

  Please save our queen.”

  To a man, every guard in that chamber nodded and added his firm assent. They loved their queen.

  I was about to ask for help, when Rand entered.

  “Thank you, Bryn.”

  It occurred to me that maybe I should have let him say goodbye first, or at least talk to his wife one more time. It also

  occurred to me that there was no real reason he could not have done this himself.

  I was about to ask when it hit me; he didn’t want to say goodbye.

  The poor man could very possibly lose his wife and child—how on earth did anyone face that? And he couldn’t have been the one to bring her the drugged drink because his face would have given him away. Rand was a strong man, mentally as well as physically, but he wore his emotions on his face. You were never in any doubt about how he was feeling and what he was thinking, and Jolie could read him like a book.

  “I’ll carry her.”

  As Rand picked up the slumbering body of his wife, the entire room of guards came to attention and saluted their queen one more time. She’d led them to what now seemed a certain defeat, but not a man there thought she could have done any different, and none of them would have traded her for another leader.

  As Rand and I walked out with Jolie, three cheers broke out from the guards.

  TWENTY- THREE

  SINJIN

  The Sinjin Sinclair who had stalked the streets of Chester, centuries before, would not have felt guilty at the thought of fleeing to safety. That Sinjin would have been glad enough to save his own hide. Vampires are, by nature, solitary and I had been happy to live the bulk of my life in that fashion. I ‘took care of number one’, as they say.

  Things had changed. Now everything seemed to make me feel guilty; not least the fact that I had lived while the people of Chester had died. And when you are six hundred years old, then every year of your existence brings fresh death while you live on. And on and on. So much to feel guilty about.

  Was this the human condition? A permanent state of guilt? If so, you could keep it. The past was the past, there was nothing I could do to change it, so there was no purpose to feeling guilty about it. The present was another matter. I found myself oddly grateful for the guilt I felt now, and I treasured it, as if it were the only thing that made me worthwhile.

  As if on cue, Rowan giggled. I do not know what she was giggling at, the child seemed to have a curious sense of humor in which everything was in some way amusing to her. But whatever the reason for her mirth, it made me smile. Maybe the sprog had seen my moroseness and was trying to cheer up her old dad.

  Dad…

  I could not help but smile just thinking of the word. Who would have thought that appellation would ever apply to me?

  “Ready?”

  I turned to see my tempest enter, accompanied by Randall, carrying the sleeping form of Jolie.

  “Daddy!” Emma ran to her father. “Is mommy sleep?”

  He nodded, and while he tried to hide it from his daughter, I could see the grief straining his face. “She was tired. You and she are going to go on a little outing, my love, and she wanted to have a nap first.”

  “You not coming?”

  It was too painful to watch and yet I found myself unable to look away.

  “No, baby girl. So you will have to look after Mummy for me. Can you do that?”

  Emma nodded. She was a precocious child, smarter than her years, but there was no way she could be asked to understand this.

  “Good girl.” He hugged his daughter, and now I did look away.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Bryn turning too, to hide her tears.

  “Be good for your Auntie Bryn and Uncle Sinjin.”

 
One more hug, then he came over to speak to us. “Sinjin, I am making it your chief responsibility to ensure the safety of my wife and daughter as well as the queen’s sister and niece.”

  “I will never allow a hair upon their heads to be harmed,” I answered. “I promise you.”

  He nodded. “I know you won’t. That’s why I’m entrusting their safety to you .” He took a deep breath. “I know we have never got on, Sinclair,” he started and nodded again. “But you are a good man.”

  “I feel the same about you,” I answered.

  He appeared uncomfortable and turned to Bryn. “How long does the sleeping potion last?”

  “Long enough,” she replied and engulfed him in her arms as tears streamed from her eyes. She did her best to dry them so Emma would not notice.

  “Well then…” He paused. What in the hell did one say at a time like this? “Look after yourself, Bryn. Look after my niece and my

  daughter.” He smiled down at the baby in its carry cot. “Bye bye Rowan. Have you got a smile for your Uncle Rand?” Of course she did. She always did. “Sinjin.”

  He nodded at me and I nodded back.

  With a parting smile, Rand walked away from us, leaving the Mirror Cavern, and with it his wife and child. I wondered how far the poor man would get before breaking down.

  “Today sucks,” said Bryn, her voice choked with grief.

  “As always Bête Noir , you have a gift for finding the right turn of phrase.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  The longer we left it, the more time we gave Luce to re-take the portal from the Faery side.

  Trying to stay as upbeat as we could for the sake of little Emma, Bryn and I said our goodbye to Mercedes, and, one by one, she lifted the precautionary spells that safeguarded the portal.

  I picked up the still sleeping Jolie while Bryn crouched to talk to Emma. “I need you to be a big, responsible girl and keep an eye on your cousin Rowan. Can you do that for me?”

  Emma nodded, delighted to be thought worthy of such a job. “Can I carry her, Auntie Bin?”

  “I think she might be a bit heavy for you,” smiled Bryn, “but it would be really helpful if you could carry her bottle. Then you can feed her when she gets hungry.”

  Emma’s little eyes lit up like sparklers at the idea that she would get to feed Rowan.

  “Come on then.”

  I saw Bryn cast a last, sad look back at the Cavern. It was not Kinloch Broch to which she was saying goodbye, but to Kinloch Kirk, to the people she had met there, and to that chapter of her life which had changed her forever. She had so much to thank the place for. And so did I; think of what I might have missed out on if I had never come here.

  We passed through the portal together and as soon as we did so, I heard Mercedes starting to put the spells back again. They could not protect th e entrance forever—Luce had strong magics at his command—but they would buy the defenders a little more time, and every minute was precious at a time like this.

  I could not have said that I was glad to be back in Faery once more. Though the darkness of Kinloch Broch might have been

  oppressive and miserable to some, I had actually found it rather homely. I am, after all, a vampire, and such places are bound to speak to the ancestral part of me that still lives in caves, crypts and ruined castles.

  Besides, Faery did not hold the best memories for me and I was worried that the Darrig might make true on our agreement. That is, if he could find me. However, beyond all of that, as soon as I was out of the portal and into the intrusively bright sunlight of the Fae realm, something started niggling at me. Something that ought to be there and was not. Something that had been there when I was last here and was now missing.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Bryn.

  I shook my head. I was unable to put my finger on what was bothering me so there was no sense in worrying anyone else about it. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

  But it seemed I was not the only one who was feeling something out of the ordinary. From the carry cot that Bryn carried issued a long wail, as Rowan started to cry.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Bryn cooed. “Don’t cry.”

  “Perhaps,” said Emma, hopefully, holding up the bottle she was carrying with great self-importance, “she’s hungy.”

  “Maybe,” agreed Bryn, as she fussed about the baby.

  For my own part, I was now looking about suspiciously. Given what the child had gone through, it was perhaps not so extraordinary that she had no more liking for the Faery realm than did I. She had been kidnapped to this place and held here. But, however much it irked me to admit it, being kidnapped had not seemed to bother her that much. She was an incurably happy child who took the world in her stride. Babies cry and yet I could not help tying the fact that she was doing so now to the sense of something missing.

  “Let’s walk on a bit,” suggested Bryn, maybe the motion of the cot will calm her down. It was clear Bryn was using the baby as something on which to focus, to distract her from everything else. “Are you okay carrying Jolie?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, let’s get a bit of distance between us and the portal or she’ll want to go back as soon as she wakes up. Which way to the Seelie Castle?”

  And as soon as the words were out of Bryn’s mouth, I realized what had been bothering me, what was missing. When I had come this way to enter Kinloch Broch through the portal, there had been a constant background noise of buzzing, the sound of the

  flower Fae’s wings beating. It was like standing in the middle of a beehive. Some of the Fae had come into Kinloch Broch with us (though most of them had already left), the rest had stayed outside to watch the portal and give us early warning if Luce’s army returned.

  Some of those had acted as guides to the elderly and vulnerable who had already been evacuated, showing them the way to the Seelie Castle—which was why Bryn’s words had made me think of it.

  But there were still supposed to be some flower Fae here to watch the portal and to show us the way. They might have left of their own accord—they were not ours to command and had done more than enough for us already, but I did not think they would have done so without a word. More than that… now that I came to stop and listened, I realized the sounds of Faery, which were always there as a sort of aural backdrop, were gone. There were no birds singing, no insects humming, no happy music. The flower Fae had fled and something had silenced this part of the realm.

  “Bryn…”

  As I turned to her , I saw a look of horror. At first I thought she had noticed what I had, but I swiftly saw that it was worse.

  She had sensed something, something that had perhaps been masked to her until now or which she had been too distracted to notice.

  I saw her lips move and knew the word before she spoke it.

  “Luce…”

  The soldiers erupted from some nearby shrubbery, racing towards us. They were fast, but I was faster, laying Jolie on the ground before knocking two of our attackers down, hurling one aside in my anger and setting on the fourth.

  “Auntie Bin!” screamed little Emma, her voice joining that of Rowan, who was now howling with distress.

  “Get back through the portal!” But even as I said the words, I knew it was already closed. And now, more soldiers leapt out, blocking the way we had come.

  On the far side of Bryn, more men emerged and I charged at them with a roar, leaping over Bryn, the children and Jolie to land on the soldiers, my fists swinging, my fangs bared. I might not be the terror of Chester any more, but when the need called for it, I was still a big scary vampire who could rip out your throat in a heartbeat. But even as I fought, I knew there were too many of them. They had us surrounded and were now closing in on all sides.

  Desperately, I tried to keep them back from my family, from Bryn, her sister and the two crying children. Bryn was down on her knees trying to comfort Emma and Rowan while protecting them at the same time. One of the soldiers made the mistake of com
ing too

  close and Bryn lashed out with her foot, knocking the man on his backside.

  “Get back you cowards! You’re attacking children!”

  With a snarl, I ran about the ring of soldiers and they leapt back. They might outnumber me, their victory might be assured, but that would be small consolation to the individual whose head I ripped off. Could I hold them at bay indefinitely? I certainly was not about to stop trying.

  “Take one step nearer and I will gut you!” I growled, like the wild animal I had become. It turned out that, sometimes, a monster is exactly what a father needs to be.

  “Let the children go!” Bryn practically screamed. “It’s me he wants.”

  “Do not let the children go!” The voice floated out across the scene with a tone of authority and command that could not be ignored. In those few words it left a terrible implication of what might happen if you did let the children go. There would be consequences.

  “Show yourself you gutless coward!” Bryn yelled angrily.

  “Gladly.”

  I did not see where he came from, but suddenly, behind the soldiers, standing between us and the mirror portal, was Luce himself.

  At the appearance of the old man, the soldiers began to stand their ground and press in closer. I was scary, but Luce was apparently scarier. They knew I might kill them, but they had seen what Luce did to those who displeased him and it looked a lot worse than death. You could not compete against that sort of fear. Their terror of me was on the surface, but their terror of Luce was bone deep, the sort of fear that turns grown men into pant-wetting children.

  For a brief moment, I even felt sorry for these poor men; what had Luce done to them to reduce them to this level? But any sympathy I might have had was tempered by the fact that they were attacking my family, and it certainly was not going to stop me from doing everything I could to hold them back.

  I rushed the circle, snarling and lashing out. But now they stood up to me, thrusting spears into my face—firearms did not work in Faery. Dodging the spear, I grabbed one man, lifting him up and hurling him into the others, trying to break their ranks.

  But just as I did this, a scream came from behind me. I whirled around to find Bryn desperately fending off attackers. One of