"THIRD TREE FROM THE LEFT," CURRAN SAID.
We stood on the porch, shoulder to shoulder, the night stretching before us.
"I see him." A reptilian-looking thing crouched in the branches of the poplar, its long scaly tail wrapped around a tree limb. The watcher Bono had left to keep an eye on me.
"We can't kill it. Bono thinks I'll sit in the house and hide behind my wards. If we kill it, he's going to know. He has some sort of telepathic bond with them."
Curran strode to the tree. The thing watched him with huge round eyes. Curran jumped, caught a low branch, and pulled himself onto it. The reptilian monster hissed. I went to the shed and brought back a coil of cable wire. Curran grabbed the thing by the neck. It squealed and let go of the branch. He hurled it down and I stepped on it and tied the wire around its neck. Its skin was translucent and colored pale olive, glistening with transparent scales. Curran jumped down and we tied the other end around the tree.
We headed toward the ley line.
WE SAT ON A NARROW WOODEN PLATFORM, hastily thrown together from bits of discarded lumber. They were called ley taxis, cheap wooden constructs that lay in stacks near every ley point. Nothing living could ride the ley line without having some sort of support under its feet. If you were foolish enough to try, the magic current would sever your legs just above the knee.
The ley line dragged us north toward Atlanta at nearly ninety miles an hour. Magic held the taxi completely immobile, so much so that it appeared the rough wooden platform hung still, while the planet merrily rotated past it.
"Explain the bone ward to me again," Curran said quietly.
"He killed the vampires and fed on them. The flesh he consumed created the bond between their bones and him. By bringing the bones inside and binding them to the stone foundation and the walls, I forced him to fight against himself. It's nearly impossible to break this kind of ward. I had also dropped the ward-markers all around the yard so he would have a clear passage to my porch. He was too happy to see me to notice."
"You baited him?"
"Yes."
"So the bone ward can be reversed, but blood wards can be overcome by a person of similar blood?"
"Apples and oranges," I said dully. I felt tired and restless at the same time. "The blood ward draws its power directly from the blood, while the Rock-Wood-Bone ward is an environmental ward. It draws power from the magic itself. The presence of bones just defines it, similar to a lens that allows only light of a certain color to pass. He can't enter my house when magic is up. And since he is magic, he must be too weak to try during tech."
I watched the planet rotate by, the darkness-drowned valleys and hills rolling on both sides of us. Poor Derek. I clenched my teeth.
"Don't," Curran said.
"I should've found somebody to listen." We didn't look at each other, choosing instead to stare into the night's face.
"Wouldn't have mattered," Curran said. "I would've still sent them to the Wood. It was the safest place for them."
"In retrospect, it all fits." My voice was bitter. "He was Ghastek's journeyman, right in the middle of the People's recon crew. He knew when vamps went out and where they headed. He knew which route your people took coming back into the city from Keep. And he spent all his free time picking up women at the bar." I leaned back. I'd had the benefit of Anna's vision and I still missed it. "So stupid."
Curran didn't say anything.
The stars shone bright, mocking us from above, laughing at two humans on a piece of junk. I closed my eyes, but sleep refused to come.
"I put a broken bottle into his throat," I said.
"I saw the bloody glass."
"He laughed. The bottle was in his neck. He was bleeding all over and laughing at me."
"He won't be laughing when I find him." He said it without bravado, flat, the same way most people promise to pick up a loaf of bread on the way home.
The Almanac said that the upir was immune to metal, wood, stone, tooth, and claw. How the hell were we going to kill him?
Curran reached over. His warm hand rested on my forearm for a moment and moved on. For some reason that made me feel better. There was no reason why it should have, but it did. I closed my eyes, put my head on the damp-smelling boards, and fell asleep.