“You’re a two-bit clown,” she corrected. “What’s the play here?”

  “I’m going to use you as a fountain, drinking eternally from your flesh,” the monster beamed. “You smell so sweet. Half human, yes, but half Vhemin too. Someone who won’t die so easily. Someone who can stay bound here forever, at my mercy, your companions doing my bidding for fear of your death while I live on the delicate juices in your veins.”

  “Gross,” Evanne said. “Wait. You…” She laughed, slapping her knee, then began pacing. She knew she looked nonchalant, but her pacing had a purpose. She angled around to the southern exit. “You think the Raven is a friend of mine? You want her to do something for you?”

  “Ah.” The vampire’s enthusiasm cooled for a moment, then he brightened. “I still have your spectre in the lantern. The very heart of your power. And your fairy, well. I know you’ll do anything for her.”

  Evanne stalked further toward the exit. “So?”

  “So, you’ll bewitch the ritualist to do as I say, then⁠—”

  “Wait. You want me to bewitch Morgan to do what you want, for fear of my death?” Evanne scratched her head. “This feels overly complicated.”

  The vampire scowled. “I can work out the kinks. I have the time, and the patience.”

  “Huh.” Evanne blew a stray rust lock from her face. “You’re a creature from beyond, something like that?” She lifted her chin in professional curiosity. “Vampire? Yeah, I thought so.” She tapped Fusillade’s muzzle against her chin. “Got the whole place in thrall, amirite?”

  The vampire beamed. “Look behind you.”

  She gave a quick glance, taking in the twenty ‘guards’ who’d come out to gaze with unwavering eyes at her. “Huh. Well, got to go.” She gave a quick grin, levelled Fusillade, and fired.

  The scattergun roared once, blowing the vampire’s hand off at the wrist. The lantern holding Hitch fell to the ground. Good enough.

  The man screamed, so Evanne bolted.

  The horde behind her howled in pursuit. But none were as fast as the vampire.

  Chapter Eight

  Tarragon huddled, arms over her head, as a legion of Bigs stampeded past her. The little crumbing of rock and molten stone created a natural lee that their river flowed around, but she didn’t stop trembling until they were all gone. I can’t fly. I can’t even stand. I am small, and this world wants to kill me.

  After they were gone, she struggled upright. Laying on its side was the lantern. It was rocking slightly as if someone inside were trying to get out. She pulled herself to it, placing a hand on the opaque glass. As she suspected, it wasn’t hot at all. It was so cold she shivered and pulled her hand back. “Hitch?”

  “I’m here,” the lantern said. “I don’t know where here is, though. I can’t see much. Shapes, mostly.”

  “How’d you get in there?” Tarragon limped a circle around the lantern. “Never mind that. We need to get you out. Evanne’s in trouble.”

  A soft laugh came from the lantern. “When is she not?”

  Tarragon bit her lower lip. “This is serious. I can’t fly. She doesn’t have you. The Raven Queen and all her magic are absent.” She thought of Heser and how he smelled strong, like an anvil. “I don’t know where Heser the Cheg is.”

  “That’s easy. Heser is where the Raven Queen is.”

  Tarragon looked to the sealed door. “Is she in there?”

  “I can’t see.” Hitch sighed. “If it’s a big door that looks new, then yes. I went in, and that’s when he got me. This lantern is some kind of trap.”

  Tarragon tapped the glass. “I don’t think it was meant for you. I mean, not specifically. We used them, back before, when we wanted sight beyond sight.”

  “You assholes trapped ghosts?”

  “I guess. Not me personally, but sure.” Tarragon looked about for a way to open the door that held the Raven Queen captive. It was huge, designed by Bigs for Bigs, and even if she wasn’t tapped out, she’d never get it open. “How do we open that?”

  “Easy,” Hitch breezed. “You ask someone for help.”

  “Everyone here is bewitched!”

  “A minor problem at best.” Hitch was silent a moment. “Is there an unconscious woman near you?”

  Tarragon glanced at the fallen form of Eden. “Yes, but I don’t know if she’ll help us.”

  “Do you have any other ideas?” Hitch sounded like he was buffing his nails against his shirt. Smug, aloof, and very punchable.

  She gritted her teeth, curled tiny hands into fists, and stamped over to Eden. The woman’s face was a mess, blood from a broken nose pooling beneath her. Tarragon kicked the woman’s chin. “Hey!” No response. She glared harder, but it didn’t do much.

  “Is there a handy pool of cooling magma about, perchance?” By the Three, Hitch sounded like he would be better in a wood chipper than a lantern, but was thinking clearer than she was. The stone she’d boiled through was just sitting there. Waiting. Wanting to be used.

  Tarragon stormed to it, grabbing a hunk of rock resting near the magma. It was hot as a brand despite the colour cooling to a sullen red, but Tarragon was from a race of reactor technicians. Mere heat wouldn’t hurt her. She humped it back to Eden, eyed the woman’s face, then took pity and headed for her hand, then hesitated. “What if she’s angry?”

  “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Right.” Tarragon pushed the glowing stone against Eden’s exposed wrist.

  There was a sizzle and the smell of searing meat, then Eden screamed, slapped Tarragon and her stone away, then bolted upright. The fairy tumbled end over end, coming to rest a couple meters back. The guard captain held her wrist to mouth. “What the hell was that?”

  “A super hot rock.” Tarragon got up, winced, and scrubbed at her hair. “I need your help.”

  “So you burned me?”

  “Yes. There wasn’t time to do it another way.” Tarragon looked at her feet. “Look, here’s how it is. You were bewitched, and I’m hoping you're not any more. Because of the pain, you see? Usually busts right through that kind of thing. If you want to kill me that’s understandable, but I’d prefer if you could open that door first.” She pointed.

  Eden turned. “Huh.” She sucked her wrist, then faced Tarragon. “Why should I?”

  “Because there is a vampire here who is hundreds of years old. Maybe as old as me. And he wants to kill people forever.” She gave her wings a tentative flutter, but they were sluggish. “And, hic, he wants to kill Evanne.”

  The guard captain listed. “I’m drunk?”

  “Yes, I think so. You smell drunk.”

  “I don’t remember getting drunk.” Eden looked at her hands, then arms, and down at her body. “I don’t remember getting dressed.” She looked around. “I don’t even remember this place. You think I’d remember, right?” She frowned. “But … I remember music. Notes falling like the tears of the Three. Soft, but strong.” Her voice faded off in wonder. “Was that Evanne?”

  “Yes.” Tarragon nodded. “She makes music.”

  “She plays like the angels. I felt it.” Eden rubbed her chest above her heart. “Right here.”

  “Well, she’s going to die.” Tarragon frowned. “I don’t want to hurry you, but she’s going to die soon.”

  “Right.” Eden ignored the lantern, headed to the door, and examined the stone beside it. “Where’s that catch..? Ah, here.” She pressed on the stone, and with a click, there came a rumbling sound. The door slid sideways.

  Heser the Cheg roared out, hands in fists, eyes wild. He made Eden in two steps, smashing the guard captain in the side of the head. She went out like a light, laying her length on the cobbles for the second time in five minutes. “Who else wants some?”

  Tarragon looked at Eden, then Heser the Cheg. “Smooth moves.”

  Morgan walked from the shadows beyond the door, cool hand resting for the briefest of moments on Heser the Cheg’s shoulder. Then she strode to Tarragon and crouched. “Fairy. What is our status?”

  “Evanne’s in trouble.”

  “Of course.”

  “I said the same thing,” the lantern said. “Tarragon didn’t think it was funny then.”

  The Raven Queen looked at Tarragon a little closer, a little longer, then nodded. “Nor now, by the looks.”

  “Evanne is trying to save us all,” Tarragon said. “And she’s all alone.”

  “What about the cat?” Heser the Cheg looked like a man who wanted to beat a few more people down.

  “Pakhet? I haven’t seen her.” Tarragon pointed to the tunnel Evanne ran down. “Evanne went that way. But I don’t think you should go there.”

  “Why, prithee?” Morgan stood, glancing to the passage.

  “Vampires,” Tarragon explained. “There is a room above full of fetishes. I believe the vampire holds people in thrall. He wants you to do that to more people.”

  Morgan nodded slowly. “So, he would spare me, but kill Evanne?”

  Tarragon frowned. “Yes?”

  Morgan smiled. “I knew I was the likeable one.” She glanced to Heser the Cheg. “Captain, I need you to buy me time.”

  Heser the Cheg looked to Morgan, the passage, then back to Morgan. “You want me to fight a vampire?”

  “If that’s what it takes.” Morgan’s smile widened. “The fairy and I have other business. Attend, Queensguard. I need as much time as you can buy.”

  “You will have until the end of all things.” Heser the Cheg lingered but a moment, then straightened, duty stiffening his spine. He ran after Evanne.

  Morgan bent and picked up Tarragon. Her hands were warm, but not as gentle as Evanne’s. “Where must we go?”

  Tarragon pointed to the hole in the wall above. “There.”

  The Raven Queen sighed. “Always, stairs.”

  “A little help,” Hitch said. “If you could, you know. Get me out?”

  “My,” Morgan said. “Is that Hitch?”

  “You can hear him?” Tarragon blinked. “It must be because of the lantern.”

  “A ghost is of no use at all,” the Raven Queen said. “But I really like the idea of a talking lantern.”

  Chapter Nine

  Evanne ran, and made good time. I am motivated. Her reforged heart hammered in her chest, breath sawing through her throat, but despite the hounds on her heels she felt invigorated.

  It’s a long-ish shot but I think it’ll work.

  She pounded down the corridor toward the gate, bounced off the bend to the left, dropped her head, and ran harder. I can’t fight. Not without Hitch. But I still know how to play. Evanne kept her guitar in a death grip, left hand around the neck like she was saving a drowning man. Her right hand held Fusillade just as tight.

  I’ve got to lead them away.

  Fusillade was running low on ammunition. Worse, it wasn’t a holy weapon. The last hand that held it was Tresward, but the long dead Knight Champion left no blessed ammunition that could purge the living dead from the world. Without a Tresward’s Storm, it was just a gun, and Evanne figured she’d need a cannon to take out a vampire.

  I hope Morgan does her part. I hope I haven’t trusted like a fool.

  Evanne heard the pounding of feet behind her. She careened off another junction and slammed into a door. Her momentum took her right through the sagging wood, hinges and splinters following her. Her right foot found nothing but air, and she pinwheeled, too panicked to scream, and descended into darkness.

  Her shoulder hit stone as she fell. Evanne’s chin slammed into a stone edge. The pain was a bright spark in the gloom. She lost her grip on the guitar, and heard it clatter into the darkness. Fusillade tumbled away as she hit her elbow. Evanne rolled, still falling, feeling the edge of stone bite her shoulder, wood slap her upside the head, and then she came to rest at the bottom.

  Howling from above.

  She scrambled, fingers scrabbling at stone, reaching. Evanne almost cried with relief when her fingers found the wood and metal of a fretboard. She grabbed the instrument, surged upright, spun, and … paused. Her Vhemin eyes pierced the gloom well enough. She was in a basement that moonlighted as a storeroom. She spat a tooth, glaring at the stairs she’d fallen down, then kicked a stray board from beside her feet.

  By the Three, it clattered against Fusillade. The weapon’s barrel watched her from the dark, a gimlet eye before a length of gleaming promise. Evanne panted her way to it, hefted the weapon, and looked around.

  Barrels. Shelves. No weapons she could see.

  There. A hunch of stone lurked, a dark blue iris to a black portal. She hustled, reached the archway, and cursed the maker of this place who saw fit to put a portcullis here. Evanne slid Fusillade into its holster, propped the guitar against the arch, grabbed the base of the portcullis, and heaved.

  Nothing. Not even a flake of rust.

  I’m fucked, I’m fucked, I’m fucked. The refrain ran through her mind, because she couldn’t stop here. Here would leave Hitch in a lantern forever. And here was a place where no one could help her.

  She heard feet on the stairs, and what sounded like sniffing.

  Evanne’s shoulders bunched. She strained, heart hammering, teeth clenched so tight she thought they might break. Curse you, weak human flesh. My father could do this. Why can’t I?

  Someone chuckled from the darkness. Evanne knew the hundred different weights of laughter, and this was laden with malice, cunning, and hunger. She screamed, heaved, felt her left shoulder twinge, screamed louder, and then the portcullis shrieked right back at her as it crashed upward. She wanted to weep, but grabbed the guitar by the neck, tight enough to choke, and stumbled into the gloom beyond.

  Evanne’s feet splashed through muck. She kept going, hand out, collecting cobwebs as she ran. The guitar banged against the tunnel wall. The passage was narrower than she expected, a tightness she felt in her chest, and she thought this might be where she died. Buried in a culvert beneath the earth, locked in the deathless embrace of the evernight.

  Fuck that.

  It was almost a relief when she rounded a bend, the dark greys and blues of her blood heat vision giving way to the startled red-yellow of living flesh. A woman, sword in hand. Evanne was surprised, because how had they gotten ahead of her? and what do I do now?

  The sword came for her, a hungering slip of edged malice. Evanne stumbled back, Hitch’s hand no longer on her shoulder, the spectre not with her. The cut was sloppy, because of course this was a human, and the human could see just two things in the dark around them: jack, and shit. Driven by the vampire, sent here to stumble into the enemy.

  That’s no way to treat your vassals.

  Evanne steadied herself, stepped back, and grinned in the lampblack dark. Be gentle. Be strong. Be a darker night, but hope in the dawn. She layered Tricks in her tone, a finger on her fret board, touching a string for comfort. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” The sword swung again, the woman panicked, and Evanne felt a pang for her. This person was a slave like a Commanded Feybrind.

  So, when she stepped in on the woman’s overswing, she only clubbed her as hard as necessary with the guitar.

  The woman dropped like a sack of millet. Evanne ignored the fallen sword, because she couldn’t use one, and hurried on through the dark. Above, a ladder she ignored—perhaps how the woman had come down—and then an intersection. Voices to the right. So, left it is.

  Left. A right. Daylight.

  She hurried, human eyes shouldering their level of the burden. Evanne found a door with a grill set at eye height. Beyond, the crimson gold of sunset.

  Oh. Oh, no.

  If there was one thing everyone knew, it was that vampires feared the Three’s Light. And the meagre glimmer remaining was draining from the sky, minute by minute.

  Evanne glanced over her shoulder, then put a hand on the door. Old wood, but not rotted. It was barred from this side, and a metal bolt set into the frame for good measure. She hefted the plank, dropped it with a splash, then slide the bolt free.

  Evanne stepped into the dusk beyond, glanced at the onyx sky, and fled.

  Chapter Ten

  The problem with Evanne is she’s Evanne. Morgan, Raven Queen of Or’sen, thought of the half-Vhemin girl who kept stumbling into danger, stumbling out with the queen in tow, and leaving Morgan owing her one.

  And I hate debt. She gave Heser the Cheg a sideways glance. “We should leave.”

  The guardsman had returned after pursuit of the enemy. His report suggested he’d waylaid five of the enemy but lost the rest when they went to ground. He looked unhappy about it, but Morgan wasn’t sure if it was because he’d left Evanne alone, or because he’d only had his vengeance on five. Heser listened to her, pursed his lips and nodded, but in the way he did when he wasn’t agreeing. It aggravated Morgan no end, because the man wouldn’t have the decency to start an argument with her. It was always, Yes, my queen, or, As the Raven wills, but never a good, Get bent. She thought of Lord Meriwether du Reeves, a man who reeked of insurrection, and then looked away.

  My lord Meriwether would have made a good match, but he wouldn’t have been as good a man as Heser. Not that it matters, because Heser is a guardsman, and I am the Raven Queen. I could as easily touch the Three moons as his face.

  Not that there were any of the Three still in the sky. Morgan glanced up, noting the light bleeding away, leaving the dark, as it always did, and smiled. “If we leave, we will have the cover of darkness. I saw no hounds for tracking. The Lord Gyles who keeps this manse is a sloppy warden. We will be free.” Of everything, she wanted to add.

  “You can’t leave.” Predictable as ever, the fairy struggled upright. Morgan looked down on the pitiful creature. She was usually a sparkling wonder, but her wings drooped, face similarly so, and there was no glimmer about her. “Evanne risked all to set you free.”

  “And without Evanne, we would not have been captured in the first place. I believe this makes us even.” Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Would you disagree?”