A single Black Devil trotted from the woods, but it was not looking at them. Its gaze was on the sky.
Then Frost knew.
The Minata-Karaia were the audience, but they had also been shepherds, herding them into a real forum, a gladiatorial ring. He turned and looked up at the top of the pyramid where those red-winged birds—blood-winged carrion birds who bathed in the lifeblood of sacrificed prisoners—had begun to land atop the temple roof, also watching, also waiting.
The Borderkind moved nearer together, forming a tight, defensive circle.
“I sense magic,” the Mazikeen said, glancing at Frost with black eyes.
The winter man nodded. “Yes.”
“It seems we did not run fast enough,” Cheval Bayard said, pushing silver hair away from her face.
Blue Jay spread his arms, the blue shimmer of deadly, invisible wings beneath them. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” he said, “but I’m tired of running.”
Leicester Grindylow pounded his fists on the ground. “Too right.”
The tiger roared.
In the air, familiar figures soared and circled, green-feathered wings spread wide, twisted antlers dark scrawls against the hazy sky. The Perytons had arrived.
The Manticore emerged from the temple atop the pyramid and began to prowl down the steps. Jezi-Baba followed. From this distance, they should not have been able to hear her laugh, and yet it rolled across the field of battle like distant, insidious thunder.
CHAPTER 15
The British ambassador’s residence in Vienna was a late nineteenth-century structure in the classical style, though rather subdued, considering that its architect had also designed the Gothic church that stood only a stone’s throw away. The windows of the first story had an oddly bunkerlike quality that made them spectacularly unattractive, though the enclosed balcony and stone-gabled windows of the second story quite made up for this. Overall, the effect was one of proud austerity. The arched entrance doors were set off center, but so large that they must have opened into some interior garden or courtyard.
In the dark of that Christmas Eve, after midnight, Oliver stood shivering in a shadowed doorway across the street from the embassy, stomping his feet to warm his legs and hugging himself against the cold. This was insane. Kitsune’s plan simply could not work.
Yet if she had failed, where were the shouts? Where were the gunshots? He had to remind himself that the world had changed, that magic did indeed exist. In the political climate of the modern world, it should not have been possible for Kitsune to slip into the building undetected. But with myth, anything was possible. If Oliver had not been convinced of that before, he certainly was now.
“Where are you?” Oliver whispered to the night.
As a fox, Kitsune had slipped across the street and alongside the embassy. On Christmas Eve, this late at night, Vienna slept and waited for morning—for celebration, for bells and elation. No security had been visible outside, and little traffic prowled the streets. Only the lithe creature who was not at all what she seemed.
Silently, the fox quickly scaled the outer wall of the embassy. She had leaped from one stone-gabled window frame to the next, and then the next, and then moved up again. Claws noiseless on the wall, she had climbed like a squirrel to the third floor, where a window stood open just a few inches.
Then Kitsune had disappeared into the ambassador’s residence.
Oliver stood watching the building now, an afterimage lingering ghostlike on his eyes. It was as though he could still see Kitsune slinking up the wall, still see her slipping through the window. The idea that this might have been his last glimpse of her settled more heavily on him with each passing moment. Most of the windows were dark, and those without light remained that way. Nothing seemed to stir within.
His heart should not hurt so much at the thought of losing Kitsune, but it did. It did. Not only because he had grown more than fond of her, but also because without her, he would be alone.
His breath quickened at the thought. Alone. And what then?
Even as the question echoed in his mind, something shifted in the shadows alongside the building. Oliver narrowed his gaze, unsure, and then he saw a deeper darkness there, a figure protruding from a newly opened window. An arm stretched out and a hand beckoned.
A soft laugh escaped Oliver’s lips. He shook his head, amazed, and darted across the street. Alongside the residence he glanced about in search of any sign of security. Only then did he spot, far along at the rear of the building in a pool of light from a streetlamp, a small object on the ground. Narrowing his gaze he saw it was a flashlight, but its owner was nowhere to be seen.
At the window, Kitsune shot him a frustrated look and waved him closer. Oliver took a breath, scanned the windows on that side of the building—all but two of which were dark—and slipped up to the window with all the stealth an ordinary man could manage. From the darkened room Kitsune stared out at him, jade eyes preternaturally bright beneath the copper-red fur of her hood.
Again she beckoned, stepping back into the room. Oliver undid his belt and removed his sword and scabbard, handing them up to her. Then he took one final look around and grabbed hold of the window frame with both hands. With a single swift motion, he boosted himself up and slid the upper half of his body through the open portion of the window. He paused a moment, then reached down for the floor. When his fingers touched carpet it was simple for him to slide the rest of his body into the room.
On the Oriental rug he lay a moment, breath coming too fast, and thought about what he had just done. He’d just broken into the British ambassador’s residence. With a sword. On so many levels, this was a terrible idea. Yet he was past regret and past caution. All that remained was what was necessary.
Oliver sat up and looked at Kitsune. She had her back to him as she slid the window shut and the light from outside lit up a fringe of fur that traced the edges of her body. He caught his breath.
Crazy. No other word for it.
“How the hell did you do this?” he asked.
Part of the answer presented itself in the desk that had been moved aside and which she silently slid back into place. She had cleared the way for Oliver to enter. But he thought of the flashlight at the back of the building and had to wonder.
Kitsune put a finger to her lips, eyes alight with mischief.
“You didn’t…hurt anyone?”
She raised an eyebrow and then moved up beside him. “Of course I hurt people,” the fox-woman whispered in his ear, the scent of her musk strong. “Two guards, one at the rear of the house, so we won’t have any trouble getting out of here, and one guarding the stairs that lead up from these offices to the residential quarters. And I persuaded one of them to provide the code for the alarm, while he was still conscious. I’m a trickster. Such things are not a problem for me. You, on the other hand—we needed the alarm code.
“But I haven’t killed anyone, Oliver, and it would be nice to keep it that way. So, hush.”
He took his sword and scabbard back and slid it onto his belt, knowing it was sheer idiocy but refusing to even consider leaving the weapon behind. It represented more than mere protection. It was a calling card from David Koenig, and from Hunyadi as well. He could not afford to lose it.
Oliver took a long breath, steadying his nerves. “Do you really think this will work?”
Kitsune went to the door of the book-lined office, but paused with one hand on the knob and the other on the polished cherrywood of a bookshelf. She glanced back, brow creased in a deep frown.
“It feels a bit too late for that question. But it should, Oliver. Rules have power. Laws, too. Not just the power they have when they are enforced, but the power of belief. When people accept and respect the rules, that makes them real. According to the laws of your world, though entire nations separate us from the United Kingdom, we’re standing on British soil. The legend says the Dustman visits the bedchambers of British children. And here we are. The Borderkind are territorial. The Dustman will probably sense me here, and when he does, he will come.”
Oliver paused, listening to the hissing of the heat and the shifting tick and pop of the embassy. “And what do we do then? How do we know what kind of creature he is?”
Kitsune smiled. “That part is up to you.”
Without giving Oliver a moment to protest further, she opened the door and poked her head out. The hood hid her face and so he could only assume she made certain the hall was clear before slipping from the room, cloak swirling around her.
After a moment, he followed her, passing through high-ceilinged, ornate drawing rooms filled with portraits of emperors and kings.
Kitsune had been in the ambassador’s residence long minutes before she had found the best point of entry for Oliver. During that time it was obvious she had been upstairs already. The guard was nowhere to be seen, undoubtedly put aside in some corner room where no one would discover him until morning, or until he raised an alarm upon regaining consciousness.
The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked. Kitsune had been very busy indeed. It creaked softly upon opening and she glanced back and gestured him to silence a final time—needlessly—before entering. A light burned in the hall bathroom, perhaps to guide the way for nighttime wanderers, and another in a sitting room at the far end of the corridor. Kitsune ignored this, and so Oliver assumed it was empty.
The fox-woman led the way to a curving staircase that wound up to the third floor. Oliver followed, several of the stairs creaking lightly beneath his step. A carpet runner kept his tread otherwise silent and he was grateful. Nervously, he slid his hand into his pocket and rubbed the seed of the Harvest gods between his thumb and forefinger. It had grown into a habit for him.
From his entry into the embassy until the moment they stood in the open door of the nursery it had been perhaps four minutes, yet each passing second grew longer, and none so long as that in which Oliver first laid eyes upon the little girl who slept in the floral canopy bed. The ambassador’s daughter—he knew only the family’s last name, Hetherton—lay curled in the bed, a plush doll crushed against her, hair spread upon her pillow, burrowed deeply beneath her covers.
Christmas Eve. In a matter of hours, she would wake in search of her presents. His mind busily wove fictions about Santa Claus and his helpers in the event that their entrance roused her. Yet he prayed that did not become necessary.
All of this was so wrong, and nothing more so than sneaking into the room of a little girl—she couldn’t have been more than three—while she slept. The magic that he still felt in his heart at the thought of Christmas Eve only made it that much worse.
Oliver hesitated. The little girl’s breathing seemed so loud. Her expression was soft and innocent, her lips parted in total surrender to sleep.
To the Dustman.
Kitsune snatched up his fingers and drew him into the room. Oliver swallowed hard and stood staring down at the girl as Kit closed the door all but a few inches. Drawing her cloak around herself, Kitsune diminished, becoming a fox in the space between heartbeats. Each time she did this Oliver felt a second of vertigo, as though he might fall into the space left by the sudden absence where she had been.
The fox trotted to a place at the foot of the girl’s bed. Oliver frowned at the lack of any sound from her passing, not even the scratch of claws upon the wooden floor, but he ought not have been surprised. Kitsune rarely made a sound, her feet seeming barely to touch the ground. The fox stood at the foot of the bed and twitched her tail as though it was a beckoning finger. She nodded as if to urge him to join her, and so he did. If the girl did stir, it would be best not to be within her view. Careful not to let his sheathed sword bang against the wood, Oliver lay quietly on the floor, hidden.
Kitsune circled him twice like a dog searching for the perfect spot to lie before the fireplace. At last she settled in front of him, backing up, nuzzling into him as though she were indeed a pet. Oliver’s throat went dry. The strangeness of the moment enveloped him. In the silence of the embassy he lay there. Low and primal, the fox purred in a way that was not at all feline. This was the purr of a lover.
She shifted her head, copper fur brushing against his arm. The fox glanced at him with jade eyes.
There, against him, the magic transformed her again. Fox became woman so suddenly that he started, then held his breath waiting to see if the child had been disturbed. Kitsune gave him half a smile, one corner of her mouth lifting. Her hair hung down from within the hood, a cascade of black velvet. It touched his arm, just as her fur had. The heat from her body had reached him before, but now she felt like a furnace so close to him.
“What about the Dustman?” he whispered, barely vocalizing, afraid to wake the girl, afraid he wouldn’t be able to speak.
“If he could sense me, he will have. He’ll come.”
She edged nearer, her body up against him, every contour felt in sharp relief.
Kitsune reached up to trace his face.
“Oliver,” Kitsune said. “There is magic in you.”
She brought her mouth up to be kissed.
Oliver shivered with lust and fascination. “Kit.”
“Ssshhh,” she whispered.
He drew back to catch her gaze, and then shook his head. No. He could not do this. No man could have been there with Kitsune, in that moment, and not desired her. It would have been so easy to surrender to that. But he owed Julianna more than this.
Julianna had gone searching for him, and according to the news, she had vanished as well. He had done his best not to think about what might have become of her. With every part of him—from muscle to spirit to breath—he felt the longing for Julianna. All he wished for was to hold her in his arms and know that she was safe, not only for her benefit, but for his own selfish needs as well. No one could look inside him the way she could. When he felt despair or fear or doubt, no one could raise him up from that the way Julianna had always been able to.
Thus far, he had not allowed himself to consider the obvious possibility—that the Sandman had taken Julianna as well as Collette. He knew his sister was in the monster’s hands, and so before he could consider the next step, he had to save Collette. Until then, he could only hold Julianna in his heart like a talisman, to keep away despair. In his mind he could still see her there on the end of the jetty, all the way back in the summer before high school began. He kept that image clear in his thoughts, polished and shining.
