“I do,” Ghastek said.
“I’ll be right there.” I hung up and turned to Julie. “The anchor is the eye of his dragon throne. It’s the ruby the size of a grapefruit located in the first room you enter once you cross the drawbridge. He is an arrogant ass. He doesn’t think he has to hide it. No heroics, Julie. Get in, get out, bring me the anchor, and I will restrain it.”
* * *
? ? ?
GHASTEK DIDN’T WANT to risk bringing outsiders into the vampire stables. Instead they had moved the yeddimur into one of the side rooms. It sat in a loup cage, staring at us with its owlish eyes. At one point it had been a human baby. Atlanta had a lot of babies.
Ghastek, Luther, Saiman, and Phillip had arranged themselves around a table strewn with notes. Some notes had coffee rings on them.
Curran sniffed the air. His lips stretched, baring the edge of his teeth. The yeddimur stench. I squeezed Curran’s hand. He was still here with me. So far, the tech had failed to steal him from me.
Behind me Hugh grimaced at the yeddimur. He had insisted on coming. We had dropped Elara at the Covens. Now we were facing the yeddimur, Luther, Ghastek, Phillip, and Saiman. The four experts looked rather smug.
“We figured out how it was made,” Phillip said, excited.
“Venom,” Saiman told me.
“Dragon venom,” Luther corrected. “Applied very shortly after birth, probably inhaled.”
“That remains to be determined,” Phillip said.
“Concentrate,” I told them, before they launched into another bickering session.
“It’s a dog,” Ghastek said. “For all intents and purposes, it acts as one. A dog has to be able to discern commands.”
“However, according to all of d’Ambray’s notes, the warriors never make any gestures,” Luther said.
“We theorized that the commands are subvocal,” Saiman said. “They have extremely efficient ears, sensitive enough to catch a whisper.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Hugh said.
“How does any of this help us?” I asked.
“Wait.” Ghastek pushed a key on the phone. “Bring in subject B.”
The double doors in the wall opened and two journeymen pushed a second cage in, also containing a yeddimur.
“Where did you get the second one?” Curran asked.
“Beau Clayton,” Saiman said. “His deputies caught one.”
The journeymen connected the two cages, locking them together. They gripped a steel handle, pushed it to the side, and the gate between the cages fell open. The yeddimur on the left scuttled over and sat on its haunches next to the yeddimur on the right.
“They’re us and we are social animals,” Luther said.
“They are quite happy sharing the cage,” Phillip said. “They sleep together and eat together.”
“We had to ask ourselves, if they are controlled by subvocal commands, then what would be the exact opposite of that?” Saiman said.
Ghastek turned to Luther. “If you please.”
Luther nodded, reached behind the desk, and produced a set of bagpipes.
“You play bagpipes?” I asked.
“No, but it was determined via experimentation that of the four of us, I produce the worst sound.” Luther stuck a pipe into his mouth and blew on it. A piercing note screamed through the room.
The yeddimur screeched.
Luther blew on the pipes. A cacophony of sounds filled the space. Curran clamped his hands over his ears. The yeddimur snarled and ripped at each other. Fur and blood flew.
Luther stopped.
The yeddimur took a few more swipes at each other and broke apart, each skulking to its own corner of the joined cages.
“We’ve tried over fifty different sounds,” Ghastek said. “Bagpipes are the most efficient. We’ve attempted them fifteen times and every single time we’ve gotten the same response.”
Suddenly the bagpipes on the druid stone made total sense.
“The sound drives them mad,” Luther said.
“It drives me mad,” Curran said, his eyes shining with gold.
I looked at him and Hugh. “Can we use it?”
“We could,” Hugh said.
“If we could make the sound loud enough,” Curran said.
Ghastek looked at Phillip. The mage smiled. “The Mage College offers thirty-seven specialties. One of them is sound and light amplification. As long as you find bagpipers, we will amp their sound loud enough to wake the gods.”
“That’s amazing,” I told them, and meant it.
All we had to do now was pull the city together and cobble an army to face Neig. We had three days in which to do it. It had to be enough.
Atlanta would come together. We weren’t just one thing. We were many: shapeshifters, necromancers, witches, mages, mercenaries . . . We came in all shapes and sizes, in every age, in every human color, in every variation of magic, and from that we drew our strength. We were surprising and unexpected, and we were united.
Atlanta would hold its own. It always did.
* * *
? ? ?
“BABY,” CURRAN WHISPERED into my ear.
I opened my eyes. I was so warm and comfortable, wrapped in him. As long as we stayed in bed like this, under the sheets, nothing could go wrong.
The magic was up. It was day five. We’d caught a lucky break, finally, and after a short magic wave on the first day of our three-day timeline, the tech held for three days and four nights. The shift happened while we were awake, and Curran remained solid this time. The tech, like magic, flooded the world with various intensities. A strong tech wave could rip him away from me. I lived these days in a state of constant paranoia.
The rest of it was a whirlwind of negotiating, explaining, demonstrating, pulling the alliance together. Between Curran and me, we’d probably gotten about twelve hours of sleep in the last seventy-two, but last night, after the bulldozers finally rolled off the field and the last of the preparations had been made, we finally went to bed, in a tent, on the outskirts of the battlefield. Martha and Mahon took Conlan, so we could rest. We were alone.
Neig was coming.
I reached for Curran. He kissed me. We shared a breath. I kissed him back, and then again and again, his lips, his stubbled jaw, his face. His hair had grown overnight into a tangled mane, and I threaded my fingers through it.
He pulled me closer to him, our bodies sliding together with ease and practice. He kissed my neck and my lips. For three days, I’d been Sharratum, because I’d had to be. I’d met with the mayor and the governor, as part of the Conclave’s delegation. I’d called in favors. I’d promised the sky and the moon for assistance. But right now, I was Kate, and I kissed him with desperate need. He responded as if I’d set him on fire and he couldn’t wait to burn.
“This won’t be the last time,” he said.
“Not if I can help it,” I told him.
“I promise you,” he said, his voice low, almost a snarl. “This won’t be the last time. Do you trust me?”
“With everything.”
“It won’t be the last time,” he swore.
We made love, hot and wild. Then we got up, cleaned up, got dressed, and stepped out of the tent.
In front of us and behind us, tents lined the fields cleared on both sides of the road. A sea of tents. The sun had barely risen above the horizon, and in the young light, the world seemed fresh. I took Sarrat and the other saber I carried and walked east, to the apex of the low hill that stretched north to south. Erra was already there, staring at the battlefield.