Читать книгу Seducing The Dark Prince - Jane Kindred - Страница 10

Chapter 3

Lucien watched the revenant from the rooftop. Starlight lent a pale, unearthly glow to the proceedings as it swallowed up the dusk, leaving the red landscape sepia toned and casting flat, colorless shadows. The demon wore cowboy boots and a leather duster with a gambler-style cowboy hat, his horse tacked up in the Western style, but this was a Hunt wraith, an undead revenant of the Viking era who roamed the earth in search of dark souls. Less substantial wraiths rode beside him, their mounts, like themselves, phantoms. No one would notice them, even staring at them head-on. No one but a black-souled phantom like himself.

But the leader was different. He was no phantom but flesh and bone, unnaturally maintained, living tissue that ought to have perished centuries ago. And Lucien had seen him before. Just hours before—at the wedding of Rafael Diamante to Phoebe Carlisle.

Lucien followed the horse’s trajectory, tracking the revenant with the scope on his crossbow. He’d slipped a little something into the Viking’s drink to see if he could trigger him. The most it had done was to get him arguing with Dev Gideon, the eldest Carlisle sister’s faithful companion. Rumor had it Dev was a shape-shifter, part man, part demon himself. The entire Carlisle family seemed to be magnets for unnatural beings. Not surprising, given their bloodline.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d decided to check out the Carlisle sisters for himself, but Theia’s large, passionate eyes challenging him with far more moxie than her slight frame warranted was certainly not it. He hadn’t expected someone witty and intelligent who took no shit. She hadn’t fallen for his player persona. And she hadn’t been impressed by his name—if anything, there’d been a little sneer on her face when she’d heard it—or acted impressed by his family’s money. But maybe it was a different kind of power that impressed the Carlisle women. The kind that was infernal in origin. If only she knew.

Lucien turned in a slow arc to follow the horseman with his scope. Leo Ström’s origins were what concerned him right now. How had he come to be the leader of the Wild Hunt? And what was the Hunt doing appearing on a lovely spring evening in Sedona, Arizona? Traditionally, it was said to appear around the winter solstice and was better suited to snowier climes.

They’d scented someone now, it seemed, and even from this distance, Lucien thought he heard their victory hoots as the phantom storm that followed them swallowed up their victim and they disappeared into the night, leaving it calm and warm.

He’d have to find out more about this Leo Ström. The man was involved with Theia’s twin, Rhea, which could mean anything in terms of unnatural origin. It might even be Rhea’s own magic animating him. It was unlikely she’d created the revenant herself, since the long dead were nearly impossible to give a convincing living appearance to, no matter how much magic the practitioner had. So perhaps she’d taken possession of a revenant created by some other unnatural power. And Lucien just happened to have access to information on any of a number of unnatural powers.

He stashed his gear and changed into something more appropriate. People might talk if he showed up at Polly’s dressed like a cat burglar.

* * *

Polly was entertaining in her booth when Lucien walked in. Aware of her out of the corner of his eye, he made a point of not glancing in her direction, knowing it would drive her crazy. His ploy worked, and in less than five minutes, she’d ditched her patrons and sauntered over to the bar where he stood waiting for his drink.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” She lifted her drawn-on nearly crimson brows with a little smirk as she leaned back against the bar beside him and raised her voice for the bartender’s benefit. “Whatever he’s having, it’s on the house.”

Lucien put down a twenty as the craft beer arrived. “That’s sweet, but I’ve got it covered.”

Polly pushed the bill across the slick wood toward the bartender. “That’s a tip.”

Lucien sipped his beer. “You’re such a control freak.”

“I like to treat my friends well.”

“Oh, we’re friends now?” Lucien turned to mimic her stance, elbows back against the bar.

Polly flipped her cherry-red hair over her shoulder, nails painted a dazzling sapphire blue. “Well, maybe frenemies.”

“Seems fair.”

“So what brings you back to my neck of the woods?”

“Edgar does.” He always used his father’s first name, never calling him Dad or Pop. “Smok Biotech is partnering with Northern Arizona University on a new venture. He sent me to supervise.”

“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing in Sedona. NAU is in Flagstaff.”

“I know where it is.” Lucien took a swig of his beer. “Went to a wedding.”

Polly’s eyes sparkled with interest. “The Diamante wedding? Lucky you. Those invitations were highly coveted.”

Lucien shrugged. “I didn’t say I was invited.”

Polly laughed. “Of course you weren’t. So you crashed the quetzal’s wedding and now you’re slumming at my joint. Who are you after?”

“Who says I’m after anyone?”

Crimson waves swayed as she shook her head. “Darling, don’t grift a grifter.”

He finished his beer and set the bottle on the bar. “What do you know about the Wild Hunt?”

Polly pushed away from the bar and grabbed his hand, drawing him with her through the jostling patrons trying to get the bartender’s attention. The joint was hopping tonight.

She led him to her booth, where the patrons she’d ditched were still waiting. “Meeting’s over, boys. I’ll get back to you when I hear anything.”

The two pale twentysomething men with slicked-back blond hair shrugged and scooted out of the booth.

One of them frowned and hung back as she slid onto the seat. “Don’t make us wait too long. The consequences may be dire.”

“Stop being so dramatic, Kip.”

Lucien sat on the bench. “Kip?”

Polly grinned. “Preppy vampires turned in the ’80s. Eternally embarrassing.” She gestured to one of her staff, presumably ordering a bottle of something. “So why do you want to know about the Hunt?

“Because I saw it tonight. And unless I’ve been doing way too much molly, it’s May, not December.”

“You saw it?”

“Why does that surprise you?”

The woman she’d signaled arrived with a bottle of wine and poured them each a glass, despite Lucien shaking his head.

“Generally, only someone who’s a target of the Hunt is treated to that sight.” Polly sipped her wine with a curious lift of her brow. “Have you been very naughty, Lucien?”

“No naughtier than usual. Why is the Hunt still in town at this time of year?”

“What makes you think I’d know?”

Lucien played with the rim of his glass. “Pols. You make it your business to know everything of interest—everything paranormal—that happens in the entire Southwest. Information is your business. Are you really going to make me pay for it? After what we’ve meant to each other?”

Polly laughed, her eyes twinkling in the wavering light of the candle on the table. “Don’t push it, Hellboy.”

“Ouch. Below the belt.”

Beneath the table, the pointed toe of her shoe stroked the side of his leg. “Best location.”

He moved his leg, and she uncrossed hers and crossed them the other way.

“But in the interest of our continued frenmity, I’ll tell you what I’ve heard.” She paused to top off her glass. “Last winter, the Hunt blew into town to deal with some riffraff, and the leader of the Hunt struck some kind of a deal that let him remain in the mortal realm indefinitely. Word is, it’s because of—”

“Rhea Carlisle.”

Polly tipped her glass toward him. “The quetzal’s sister-in-law, yes. And today you crashed the quetzal’s wedding. I take it Leo Ström is the reason.”

“One of a couple of reasons.” Lucien swirled the wine in his glass, thinking about Theia’s large eyes. And the way she’d held on to his arms after he’d saved her from choking.

“And would another of those reasons be Rhea Carlisle’s identical twin?”

Lucien glanced up, caught off guard. “Why in the world would you say that? I just met her today.”

Polly shook her head knowingly. “Those Carlisle women have a way of getting under a man’s skin. I’d be careful of that one if I were you. She’s deceptively humdrum.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She’s very normal.” Polly said the word as though it were a terrible insult. “Very sweet. People think of her as the least talented of the bunch, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her with a secret I didn’t want found out.”

It was a warning he’d be wise to pay heed to.

“As for Ström, he used to come in here with a redhead years ago. A real redhead.” She grinned and flipped her hair. “Not like me.”

“And?”

“And apparently she’s a rogue Valkyrie. A couple of regulars knew her—also Valkyries—and didn’t care much for her.”

That was the missing piece. The Valkyrie must have been the one to create the revenant. And somehow she’d made a deal with Rhea Carlisle.

* * *

Full of mango lassi and sweet Kashmiri naan, Rhea wasn’t interested in reading an old man’s treatises about the history of the Covent written in longhand. Which suited Theia just fine. Alone, she wouldn’t have to hide what she was looking for. She drove Rhea back to her car before heading to Phoebe’s place with Rafael Diamante Sr.’s archives.

Puddleglum, Phoebe’s Siamese tabby, curled up with her in the guest bed while she pored over the materials, looking for anything about the Smok family. As she turned the pages, she noticed a peculiar effect when she lingered on an entry: the text on the page began to shift beneath her touch. Rafe hadn’t mentioned anything about magically enhanced pages, but here it was. Like clicking a magical hyperlink to load a page of related content, touching a reference in the text made the copy on the page transform into the detailed document to which Diamante referred. When she lifted her finger off the page, it returned to the original journal entry.

Fascinated, Theia thumbed through an entry on the Smok family’s history. But it wasn’t about the Diamantes at all. It was an accounting of Madeleine Marchant’s belongings, given to the nobleman who had been her benefactor—none other than one Philippe Smok, Vicomte de Briançon. And among those “belongings” were Madeleine’s children: seven daughters, in fact. Seven sisters.

The Lilith blood allele—a hypothesis Theia had formulated when she and Rhea had first traced their genealogy—was passed down through recessive genes, only resulting in the Lilith phenotype when daughters were born to two carriers of the gene in Madeleine’s direct line. And this always seemed to result in the birth of seven sisters with the gifts. But she hadn’t realized that the first set of sisters were Madeleine’s own daughters.

Puddleglum plopped down in the middle of the journal to announce that Theia was done reading. She hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. Lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling, she tried to work out what Lucien Smok’s game might be. There was no way his appearance at Phoebe’s wedding was a coincidence. Rafe was right. She should keep her distance. But if his family had a connection not just to the Covent but to Madeleine herself, then Lucien surely knew it and had sought them out deliberately. Theia had to find out what he was up to. Particularly with regard to Smok Biotech.

The arrival of the vision was the first indication that she’d actually fallen asleep.

It flew out of the night like a carrion bird, circling overhead, waiting for death, casting a heavy shadow on the creatures below: the crow. The wolf. The dragon. The flying thing drew closer, and now she was looking up at it, standing with her sisters. It was both a vulture and a reptile, a prehistoric lizard with wings—a pterodactyl, perhaps—its head birdlike, with glowing red eyes, bat-like wings stretching out from the lizard body.

In the distance, a rooster crowed, and the sound became a screech in the thing’s beak, a scream of laughter as it dived, talons outstretched.

The rooster crowed again. Light blazed through a crack in the blinds. Dawn light. The rooster was somewhere outside. Nice. Phoebe hadn’t mentioned the built-in neighborhood alarm clock. Theia pulled the pillow over her head and rolled onto her side.

Before the cock crows twice. What was that from? Something in the Bible, she thought. New Testament. She hadn’t been to church in years, but she remembered it now: Peter’s denial of Christ. The cock outside had crowed twice. Not that unusual, probably. But why was that sticking in her head? Cock, not rooster. Theia giggled, knowing what Rhea would have to say about it.

Cock crows twice. The vision came back to her in a rush. It wasn’t the Bible phrase she was thinking of, after all. The flying thing—it hadn’t been a pterodactyl like she’d speculated in the dream. It was a cockatrice. And it was coming for them.

In middle school, she’d once gone with a friend to her church, an evangelical one. The preacher had spoken of some mad theory about human-animal hybrids and the evil plot of godless scientists who wanted to bring back such things as griffins, harpies and cockatrices. His theory claimed such creatures had roamed the earth before the Great Flood because of the sins of unnatural men who’d bred them, and God had wiped them out.

Theia had barely been able to contain her laughter, and her friend had been furious. Even at twelve, Theia understood enough science to know how idiotic such a theory was. Nobody was trying to splice genes across species to create monster hybrids, and even if they did try, it wouldn’t work.

Except... Lucien Smok had said Smok Biotech’s research at NAU was both scientific and supernatural. And what was more supernatural than mythical creatures that turned out to be real?

She certainly hadn’t believed dragons were real until recently, when she’d seen two of them with her own eyes. Dev Gideon shared his form with the dragon Kur, and Rafe was a scion of Quetzalcoatl who sprouted iridescent feathered wings and snake flesh and commanded the dead. And she hadn’t seen Leo shift, but according to Rhea’s account of their time battling another ancient dragon in the Viking underworld, he could transform into a serpentine creature with the destructive energy of the mythological Jörmungandr—who maybe wasn’t so mythological after all.

What if the Smok family’s “magical-adjacent” connection was that they were bioengineering other such creatures?

Theia unhooked her arms from the pillow, and her eyes focused on the crimson business card on the nightstand. If she wanted to get to the bottom of this, she was going to have to take Lucien up on his offer.