Munro had much to accomplish and no time to do it all. Every second here was a risk. He asked Loa, “If the warlocks surround this place, how will we get out?”
“Once I’ve drained your pockets, I’ll call you two a Luber.” At Kereny and Munro’s blank looks, Loa explained, “Lore Uber.”
Kereny sighed. “I still don’t know what that means.”
“It’s a demon teleportation service.” The priestess gestured to a flyer behind her counter. Luber promised “Lore-wide travel in less than a nanosecond. Confidentiality is our vow to the Lore!”
Like most Lykae, Munro both mistrusted and resented teleportation, or tracing. Whenever his clan had warred unsuccessfully with the Vampire Horde or evil demonarchies, tracing had been the sole factor in their defeat. “Who runs the service?”
“Deshazior the storm demon. He started it in addition to his other businesses. Luber has proudly announced that it’s gone two days without a single accident, ambush, or melee on the job.”
Two whole days? “I know Desh. He’s a good bloke.” The storm demon was a former pirate with a salty accent, huge horns, and no filter. Back in the day, they’d fought the Horde together.
Loa took a phone from her dress pocket. “I’ll send him your details and ask him to be on standby.” As Kereny watched with fascination, the priestess’s fingers flew over the screen. Beep went the text message. “Done. With my brokerage commission added, of course.”
“Aye, then. Where’s my brother?” Munro needed Will to help him defeat Jels.
“Will and Chloe are offplane. He called this morning for an update and said they would check back in the next couple of weeks.”
Ballocks. Munro would have to field the warlock threat and an immortality quest on his own. “They’re together? How are they?” Nine hundred years of history told him to expect the worst. And Will had never gone unsupervised this long.
“They’re fantastic. All drama put to bed.”
“Uh-huh.” No’ buying it. But maybe Loa didn’t want to reveal the whole truth in front of Kereny. He refrained from asking more about their personal lives. “Why are they offplane?”
“They’re bent on rescuing you, which means they’re on the hunt for Nïx.”
“How does Nïx figure into this?”
“When the Vertas alliance gathered outside Quondam’s sphere to free you and your men, the Valkyrie said, ‘You assume Munro wants to be rescued? You’ll ruin everything between him and his cellmate.’” Loa tapped her chin with a manicured nail. “Now it makes sense why that was so funny to her. Anyway, she outlawed any aggression against the warlocks. After that, the witches ditched the campaign, and no one else could pierce the boundary. Will couldn’t abide leaving you in there, so he’s off to find Nïx and talk her out of her decree.”
Kereny asked, “And who would Nïx be?”
Munro answered, “The Ever-Knowing One. She’s a three-thousand-year-old Valkyrie and the de facto leader of the Vertas League. She’s also the most powerful soothsayer in all the worlds.” Yet her godlike strengths were equaled by her many weaknesses—disorientation, capriciousness, madness. “Looks like the warlocks were no’ the only ones who foresaw you’d be mine.”
Hell, Nïx had actually done him a solid letting him rot in that dungeon. If there’d been any interference from outside Quondam, Munro would’ve lost his chance to go back in time for Kereny.
But Nïx hadn’t done Ariza any bloody favors. “Why would the Valkyrie side with the warlocks?”
“She said all the factions in the Lore—from the warlocks to the werewolves and from the Vertas to the Pravus alliances—would need to unite to stand any chance against the Møriør. She mentioned recruitments. And Moneyball. She said she needed ringers, and she was off to get them.”
“Are the Møriør such a danger?” Jels hadn’t been concerned about the Vertas, but he feared the Møriør.
“Oh, you have been gone awhile,” Loa said. “They blew down Val Hall, lair of the Valkyries.”
“With explosives?”
“With a single breath. Darach Lyka—the primordial Lykae—razed it to the ground.”
“Fuck me.” Another worry. Put it on the list.
Loa muttered, “That ship has officially sailed.”
After flirting for years, he and Loa had kissed before he’d left for Quondam, but neither had experienced the life-changing heights they’d both expected. Once it was over, she’d patted him on the shoulder and said, “We’ll never be revisitin’ this again,” and he’d given her a definitive nod.
Kereny’s watchful gaze was unreadable as she said, “Lyka’s the one originally bitten by a wolf in the Book of Lore, right? Is he your great-great—great times twenty—grandfather?”
“Nay, he bit and turned others, who then begat our bloodlines. But each Lykae beast can be traced to his bite.”
Kereny nodded, taking everything in, then said, “You might as well go ahead and explain what the Møriør is.”
“Aye, then. They’re a group of primordials—the oldest and strongest of each immortal species. Their members range from the King of Hell to a giant. True monsters. They mean to rule all Loreans beneath a single bootheel.” He couldn’t even contemplate that threat now. “But one enemy at a time. Now we contend with the warlocks.” He asked the priestess, “Can you arrange for the House of Witches to place a boundary spell like yours over Glenrial? Jels might know of my wards.”
“On it.” Loa’s fingers flew over her phone screen once more. Moments later came an incoming-text beep. She scanned the response. “Done. With my surcharge, naturally.”
Kereny couldn’t control her curiosity. “Did you somehow send a telegram to the witches?”
“Well, in a way, yes. A telephone telegram, of sorts.” She told Munro, “I assume your own phone is in a pile somewhere in Quondam’s dungeon.”
Or an acid pit. “Something like that. And I’ve got to check on my wards.” Also, King Lachlain would need a status report.
Loa crossed to an aisle with a sign that read: Wicca Tech! She collected a phone and tossed it to him. “Just released by the House of Witches.”
“Wicca tech?” The packaging claimed that the phone was shatterproof, fireproof, and waterproof “all the way to Nereus’s lair.” The battery was promised to last a decade, and reception was “guaranteed anywhere in all the worlds!”
How much Munro detested magic; how much he was beginning to rely on it.
He tore open the package, thinking, If Tàmhas could see me now. Munro had forbidden the mortal boy to get a simple protection spell, calling his request blasphemy.
Yet Munro now stood in a Loremart full of hexed goods, his body healed from some kind of witchly brew, and he’d hoped for exactly such a spell for his mortal mate. What a godsdamned hypocrite.
When he clasped the phone, pain pricked his hand. He flipped the case over, saw that the phone had sucked a drop of his blood into a tiny reservoir. “What the hell, priestess?”
“Ah, that. Your lifeblood powers a spell that will siphon the information from your previous phone. That’s a beta feature, so your patience is requested.”
He glanced at the screen, saw his information slowly populating. He gazed over at Kereny. “I’ve got to make a few calls. Why don’t you look around for some gear? But stay away from the windows. And try no’ to antagonize the snake. And touch nothing that looks like it was made for immortals.”
She quirked a brow. “Wolf, I did manage to keep myself alive all this time.”
“Nay, lass, you dinna. Twice you dinna make it to thirty.”
Kereny narrowed her eyes. “That remains to be seen.”
“Come, mortal,” Loa told her, breaking up the tension, “let’s shop!”
Once they’d headed across the store, Munro rang his wards but got neither Rónan nor Benneit. He called King Lachlain; no answer. Where was everyone?
Munro dialed Madadh’s line, intending only to leave a message, yet Madadh quickly answered.
“Was hoping you got out,” the male said in Gaelic. As Glenrial’s master of the watch, he would be instrumental in its protection.
Munro replied in the same language, “I dinna expect you to have a phone so soon.”
He admitted, “Some bloody Wicca tech or something.”
“I as well. Have you seen Rónan or Ben?”
“I dispatched a sentry to retrieve them. They’re out camping. With witches.”
Another worry for another day. Add it to the list. “How much do you remember?”
“Every bloody second.”
Munro remembered too. Please, mister, no! Since none of his victims had resurrected, that young father had died beneath Munro’s fangs. Shaking off those memories, he said, “On my way out of Quondam, I might’ve destroyed the warlocks’ temple and their time-travel gateway and gotten Ormlo killed. Jels was winged as well.” Shame that arm would grow back.
“The tits.” Madadh was a wolf of few words. “What of your married mate?”
“She dinna resurrect.” Munro’s gaze fell on her across the shop. “So I went to the past to collect her again. She’s still mortal.”
Madadh grunted.
Munro knew him well enough to translate that sound: Bad bounce, that. “I’m getting a boundary spell for Glenrial. No vassal will be able to pierce the witches’ protection, but we canna depend on that forever. We need to train our sentries no’ to release their beast if the Forgotten show.”
“On it. Will no’ happen overnight.” He grew quiet for a beat.
Munro knew they were both remembering when a vassaled Madadh had turned on his packmates in Quondam. “Look, if you had no’ attacked us that night, I would no’ have my mate.”
“I’ll tell myself that. A lot.”
Munro said, “I have no idea when I’ll be back to Glenrial.”
“I’ll hold down the fort.” Pause. “I sired two newlings in Quondam. Want to reach them.”
The Lykae clan’s law decreed that any newling must be secured in the dungeon of Kinevane Castle, the royal seat in Scotland, until he or she learned to control the beast. If one did.
One reason I never considered the possibility for my adopted lad. Munro remembered how excited Tàmhas had been, running up and saying, “Heath will do it, Da! He’ll give me the bite.” Hotheaded Prince Heath. As willful as King Lachlain and as wild as Prince Garreth—a ruinous combination. No one had been surprised when the prince had died young. . . .
“Munro?”
He snapped back to the present. “We’ll figure something out with your newlings.” He’d seen thousands of them in Quondam’s dungeon. “Just give me some time.”
“Aye, then. Rest easy, friend,” Madadh said. “And take care of your human.”
Munro found Kereny looking over at him and couldn’t drag his eyes from his new female. Fierce, intelligent, beautiful beyond the telling. With her tart, harridan tongue. Now would be a good time for me to stop staring. “She will no’ be human for long. . . .”