into his body the instant they walked into the forest where Liadan had
promised to attempt a locator spell. That wasn’t the spell she had
used.
Beck had easily pulled the arrow from his shoulder, but the
damage was done. The arrow held a spell to pull the magic out of
him. Cian just missed getting hit by the one meant for him. Beck had
quickly succumbed to the spell. All of Beck’s strength had been
sucked from him. What Liadan hadn’t counted on was that it wouldn’t
transfer to her. Beck’s magic had a handy place to go.
It had gone straight into Cian.
Cian’s brain felt like it was going to explode. He wasn’t built to
handle both his and Beck’s magic. Every instinct in his body told him
to hide and sleep. He needed to find safety and lay down so his body
could rest. It was the only way they would survive.
Cian struggled because his brain was processing so much that it
was difficult to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.
He took a deep breath and pushed on. Liadan wouldn’t stop to give
him a break. She would follow him until she caught him.
Rain began to fall, and Cian realized he was doing it. Beck’s
magic was his to call upon. Cian willed the storm to become a
hurricane. That would slow the hag down. Cian’s shoulder ached
from Beck’s weight, but he walked through the gale untouched as the
world whipped around him.
He saw a small hunting cabin through the trees and immediately
slowed the winds down. It was perfect, but it wouldn’t be if it was in
chunks of wood because a storm tore it down. Cian made it into the
small structure and gently laid his brother on the dirt floor. His hands
were shaking as he did what he needed to do.
Within seconds, the cabin was engulfed in green. Inside, the cabin
went pitch black as the world receded under a wall of vines and
thorns. It was thick, and the trees themselves had orders to protect this
place.
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Cian could hear the storm he’d begun rattling the world outside.
He fell to his knees and was grateful for the darkness. There was
nothing but darkness now, and it would stay that way unless someone
could find a way to bring Meg back to them.
As the hopelessness of his situation hit him, Cian lay down beside
his brother. His body knew what to do. Beck had gone into a fugue
state. He wouldn’t wake unless their bridge returned. Only Meg could
save them. Only Meg could give Beck back his strength and Cian
back his mind.
“Come back to us,” Cian prayed as sleep overtook him.
Outside the small cabin, the storm roared on.
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Chapter Twenty-One
Meg took aim and slowly squeezed the trigger. She watched as the
bullet tore through the target. Even at a distance, she knew it was a
solid hit. She’d bought the Ruger .357 after trying every handgun they
let her rent at the range. Well, she amended, Dante had bought the
.357 with his credit card. Meg didn’t actually have much money of
her own. She helped him around the store. She had been doing his
nightly books for the last three weeks, but she wasn’t letting him pay
her much. She wouldn’t be here long enough to do the paperwork, so
everything he gave her was under the table.
Meg checked her watch. It was almost time to meet him. He was
picking her up to look at another spot.
It had been the longest three weeks of her life. The computer had
found an astonishing number of potential sites, and each one had been
a bust. It was frustrating, but Meg had no other choice. She couldn’t
give up.
Dante had been a godsend. He’d quickly figured out how to use
the computer to their best advantage. He’d learned through trial and
error that the computer had settings to detect everything from
atmospheric content to the pH of the soil. Dante had hypothesized that
the door to the Faery plane could potentially be found by taking
careful readings and comparing it to the rest of the area. Dante had
been busy taking measurements and putting them into his program. So
far, they’d had no luck.
“Hey, Meg.” A familiar voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
Meg carefully put the weapon away as she greeted him. “Dante, I
thought I was meeting you outside.”
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He shrugged and offered to carry her case. “I have Gina watching
the store. It’s no big deal. I wanted to get a chance to run by this one
address I found. I think we have a shot there.”
Meg eyed the young man. It was odd how different he was from
his vampire counterpart. They looked almost identical, but the
differences in their lives had taken a toll on this Dante. He hadn’t
grown up with the privileges of the vampire. He had been raised
middle class after his father sold his family’s cattle ranch to a
corporation. From what Meg had learned, Dante’s parents had split,
with his mom returning to her Irish home with his sister Susan. Dante
had remained behind and been forced to drop out of college to take
care of his dad.
This Dante lacked the confidence his doppelganger had. He was
still funny and bright, but there was an aloofness to him that wasn’t
present in her Dante. Meg got the feeling this Dante would be loyal to
very few people. He would keep his circle small.
He smiled. It was something Meg had noted he rarely did. “Let’s
go check it out, and then we can get burgers.”
“Okay,” Meg said, pulling one of his old jackets over her T-shirt
and jeans. Dante had tried to be generous, but Meg had only allowed
him to buy her a couple of pairs of jeans, some T-shirts, and two
sweaters. It was all she would need, she promised herself as she
followed him.
Meg got into his beat-up SUV and buckled her seat belt. Dante
was going on about how his newest program had found this spot. He
said something about a number of police reports and how often the
property had been sold, but Meg was thinking about other things.
She had been on the Faery plane for about a month, but three had
passed here. Time moved differently on different planes. How long
had Beck and Cian been wondering about her? Had they managed to
stop the hag’s plans? Her hands clenched with anger when she
thought about someone in the village pretending to be their friend. All
the while, this hag was waiting to pounce the instant the twins showed
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vulnerability. The hag wouldn’t look different from a normal villager
as she could take different shapes.
Meg had been reading up on hags and knew it could be any of the
females of the village. Meg had her suspicions, hence the .357 she
intended to take back with her. If Liadan gave her even a hint that she
wasn’t what she said she was, Meg intended to put a couple of rounds
in her. Meg felt a wicked smile crease her face. She really hoped it
was Liadan.
“That�
�s a scary look,” Dante said with a grimace.
“Sorry,” Meg apologized and schooled her face into something
less bloodthirsty.
It had been hard to readjust to this plane. She had thought she
would immediately fall back into patterns of working and watching
TV, but something intrinsic had changed within her. When she
finished with work for the day, she prepared for the day she would go
back to her men. She had spent hours and hours making lists and
gathering items she wanted to take with her.
She had a large duffel bag filled with small items that would be
helpful. She had bought her ten favorite books at a half-priced store,
along with five DVDs she loved. She was sure Vampire Dante could
make them work on the computer. She had a disc filled with music
she’d downloaded. She’d bought a couple of first aid kits and
essentials. Her bags were packed. Now she just needed that ticket
home.
She hadn’t completely ignored this plane. Meg found herself
looking her own name up on the internet. There had only been a
single article on her as a missing person. Her mother had commented
that she believed Meg had run off with some man and would get in
touch when the relationship soured. It was odd, given that Meg had
never exactly run off before, but if it gave her mother comfort, she
would go along with it. Besides her mother wouldn’t recognize her
anymore.
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Meg wore her hair down now all the time. She’d given up on
makeup and looked younger for it. She moved with an ease and grace
that came with being comfortable in one’s skin. The awkward, shy
girl was gone. In her place was a wife who had one job to do, get back
to her husbands.
“That’s it,” Dante said as he pulled into the small parking lot.
They were on the outer edges of downtown and parking was more
plentiful. Meg stared at the warehouse. It was dilapidated and hadn’t
seen better days in years. The door hung haphazardly from its frame.
Meg noted the staircase was missing some steps.
Dante opened his door and slid out. “The last two owners sold it at
a loss. It’s had fifteen owners since it was built twenty years ago. It
was a warehouse for one of the big department stores. They had so
many accidents the chain closed it down. I came out here yesterday
morning and installed a couple of cameras. I thought I would cover
some of the big spaces and see if anything came up.”
There was something about the space that pulled at her. “I think
you may be on to something,” she said with the first real enthusiasm
she’d felt in weeks. “Let’s get those cameras.”
Four hours and a half-eaten burger later, Meg thought her eyes
were going to burst out of her head if she had to watch one more
minute of nothing.
It was like watching paint peel. She wasn’t going through frame
by frame, but she couldn’t speed it up much, either, for fear of
missing something. Dante had covered as much of the space as he
could with four cameras. So far, there had been nothing but the eerie
green glow of the night vision.
“Anything?” Dante walked into the office from the store. He
walked past the long table cluttered with laptops and desktops, their
inner workings open to the air.
“The place has rats. Other than that, nothing except a few pigeons
that flew by the camera. This is the second camera I’ve sat through.”
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“Whoa, what the fuck was that?” There was real alarm in Dante’s
eyes. He had gone a little pale.
“What?” Meg queried as she moved the mouse to back up the
feed. Her heart seized with joy at the sight of a long, thin man
walking past the camera. He was in a hooded cape, but there was the
briefest glimpse of his eyes. Meg wanted to jump and shout her
happiness to the world. She settled for announcing triumphantly,
“That’s a Planeswalker demon.”
Dante slumped into the seat behind her. “You aren’t crazy.”
Meg slid him a bemused glance. “I thought we’d settled that a few
weeks back.”
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “I was still certain you were
loony.”
“Then why have you been helping me?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, sweetheart, but you have
fabulous tits,” Dante said with a sigh. “I figured once you gave up on
the whole idea of being queen of the faery world, you might consider
sleeping with me. Now I see that demons are real. I’m going to church
tomorrow.”
Meg didn’t think she wanted to get into how to save his soul. She
chose to concentrate on the question at hand. “What was the time?
Did you see which way he came from?”
Dante backed up the tape and checked the time log. “It was three
minutes after midnight last night.”
“That makes sense. It’s an in-between time. I read about it. The
veil between worlds is thinnest then. That’s when the door opens.”
She looked at the clock. It wasn’t even ten yet. There was still time.
“We can make it.”
Dante took a moment and shoved his hair back, running his long
fingers over his scalp. “You’re really leaving.”
She turned to him. She had noticed that he didn’t have a lot of
friends. He seemed content to spend his free time working on
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I’m married to your cousins. I love them very much, and they need
me. I hope you understand.”
He smiled slightly. “And I’m a vampire? What am I like there,
Meggie? Am I lonely?”
Meg laughed at the thought. “As if. Dante Dellacourt doesn’t lack
for anything except tact.”
“Tact is overrated,” Dante pointed out.
“Spoken like your vampire self.” Meg let her hand drift over his.
“Dante Dellacourt doesn’t let anything stop him. He once told me that
if he was going to do something, he would do it big. There was no
point in anything less. Of course, he was discussing lying through his
fangs at the time.”
“I sound like a character there.”
“You could come with me, you know,” Meg offered. He reminded
her a little of herself before fate had changed her life completely.
Dante shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. One of me
is probably more than any plane should have to handle. I think I’ll
have to try to make a go of it here. Besides, I have my shop, you
know.”
He was scared, and Meg didn’t blame him. She might have spent
a little more time trying to convince him, but she only had two hours
before that door opened. “If you change your mind, you know where
the gate is.”
As she turned toward the stairs that led to the apartment, she saw
Dante sitting very still, obviously deep in thought.
* * * *
Meg hefted the duffel bag in one hand. It was heavy, but nothing
she couldn’t handle
. Her heart was racing as Dante slammed his door
shut and turned on his halogen flashlight. Her boots crunched the
gravel beneath her feet as they quietly made their way to the door of
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the warehouse. The air was cool around her, and she pulled her
sweater closer.
Dante went first, pushing the heavy door aside and holding it open
for her. He held his free hand out. “Let me carry that for you, Meg.
Come on, it’s my last chance to be a gentleman.”
Holding the bag out, she allowed Dante to take it. She took the
flashlight. He slung the bag over his shoulder and followed her into
the darkened recesses of the warehouse. It was very different from
when they visited earlier in the afternoon. There was a gloom over the
whole place that seemed very foreboding. Meg took a deep breath and
had to force herself to continue moving forward.
“Wow, I really don’t like this place,” Dante said.
She looked back at him. His face was pinched and tight with fear.
She sympathized. If she didn’t have to be here, she would probably be
running right now. “Dante, I’ll be fine. You don’t have to come in
with me. I can make it on my own.”
His eyes narrowed, and even in the shadows, she could see she’d
pissed him off. “Just lead the way, sister. I might not be a vampire,
but I can handle it.”
“Of course you can, Mr. Dellacourt,” a silky voice said from the
outer reaches of the light. Meg nearly jumped out of her skin as the
light revealed that they were not alone. A Planeswalker was standing
on the steps leading to the second floor. He turned his head from the
light. “If you please, Your Highness, that light is intrusive.”
Meg directed the light out away from his face. Her hands were
shaking as she faced the demon. Was this the same demon who had
taken her here? She thought she recognized the voice. “Are you here
to stop me?”
The demon’s laugh filled the space. “No, Your Highness. I am
here to use the door. I walk these planes on a daily basis. I gain
strength from crossing through the veil. I also take contracts and
receive payment to access the doors from those less intelligent than
yourself and the great Mr. Dellacourt.”