Crimson Veil

Chapter 9

By the time Nerissa and I were done, everyone upstairs had calmed down and gone to bed. Nerissa had immediately fallen asleep, resting soundly, and I didn’t want to wake her, so I decided to go outside for a walk. The night was blustery, but a little rain and weather wouldn’t bother me. It had been a while since I’d had the chance to walk the land. I was becoming more of a city girl than anything else, but tonight, the creaking of the trees beckoned to me, and the stinging rain that pelted along my cheek enticed rather than warded me off.

I shrugged into a jacket—no use getting my shirt soaked—and quietly slipped out the back door, into the yard. From the bottom of the porch steps, I could see the outline of Iris’s house, a light was burning in one of the upstairs rooms, and my guess was that one of the babies, or maybe all of them, was awake and demanding food. The thought of children seemed so alien. I didn’t know how anybody could be brave enough to tackle the job—it was so overwhelming and all-consuming from what I’d seen.

Nerissa had never mentioned wanting kids, but I suddenly wondered… how did she feel about the subject? Would I be depriving her of having them? Relationships were complicated enough, especially with me a vampire. Then again, she was a grown woman. Surely, she’d thought it through. Pushing the thought out of my mind—we had enough to worry about right now without adding that to the list—I decided to cross that bridge later and turned my focus to what remained of the gardens.

Almost everything outside had been harvested except for some of the winter root vegetables. The guys had built an addition on to Iris’s house—a greenhouse. So now we’d have herbs and tomatoes and lettuce and a few other goodies all year round. Smoky had also filled both freezers that were in the shed with a couple of deer, a cow, and at least two pigs. I wasn’t sure where the animals had come from, but knowing Smoky, he’d caught them while in dragon form. I did know that the guys had butchered and dressed the animals themselves.

As I was wandering along, thinking about going down to Birchwater Pond, I saw a figure up ahead, sitting on one of the benches we’d strewn along the walkways on our land. It was cousin Shamas.

Shamas’s mother—Olanda, our aunt—had died some months back. He’d landed over here, Earthside, when there was a price on his head, and had gone to work for Chase. Not all that long ago, we’d discovered that he’d studied sorcery back in OW, and that he’d fucked things up royally in an attempt to pull himself back from the darker elements he’d been connected with. It had almost gotten him killed. The news had set Camille at odds with him, something I knew broke his heart.

“Shamas, what are you doing out here? You’ll get soaked through.” I gingerly sat on the edge of the bench. Water didn’t bother me, but that didn’t mean I wanted my butt wet.

He let out a slow sigh, the air whistling between his teeth to match the gusting winds whistling through the treetops.

“Doing some serious thinking. I’m sorry about your father. Everything has been so crazy the past few days, I don’t think I got a chance to tell you that.” He was the spitting image of Camille, and as I gazed at him, I thought that Sephreh had looked like this when he was younger.

“That’s all right. We’ve all been under the gun.” I had the feeling something was bothering him—something big. “So what are you thinking about?”

He ducked his head, the rain streaking down his face. “Camille. She could have died over in Otherworld. Delilah, too. You all could have. The three of you are so brave. You tread into these situations never knowing what you’re going to find, and you face death on a regular basis.”

I wasn’t sure where this was going, but it sounded like a pity party to me. “We aren’t that brave. We just believe in what we are doing. We don’t have much of a choice, you know. Either we do it, or it goes undone.” I didn’t want to be cross with him, but I had the feeling that if I didn’t shake him out of whatever funk he was in, he’d be useless to Chase and to us. It wasn’t that depression was such a bad thing, but we needed Shamas to be at the top of his game.

“See, that’s the thing. I’ve never really believed in anything. I’ve never had a cause I cared about. I’m a selfish bastard when you get down to the core. But I’ve made a decision.” He straightened his shoulders. “With the war going on back in OW, the elves and the Svartans need help. I’m going home to enlist in their army. I’m a damned good sorcerer. They can use me against Telazhar.”

Okay. So I hadn’t expected that—not in the least. I wasn’t sure what to say. On the one hand, we could use him right here. On the other, as long as he was around Camille, he was going to pine for her and that could end up with him in a world of hurt. Unless we were all reading the situation wrong.

I cleared my throat and turned to him. “Tell me the truth, Shamas. Are you still in love with Camille? I won’t say a word.”

He regarded me quietly for a moment. Then in a hushed voice, he answered. “I’ve never stopped loving her. Even when the Court forced me to abandon her, I never could shake her. She and I… we were a lot alike. We had a connection that we never talked about, but it was there. We had so much in common, but between my envy over her magical abilities, and the nobility pushing me to marry within my own caste…” Shrugging, he held up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I was too weak-willed to fight them.”

“You know that it can never happen, right? You lost her when you turned your back on her. You lost her again when she found out you’d gone over to the enemy to study sorcery… when you were involved in a plot to attack the Moon Mother’s grove. And don’t even start about how you backed out and warned them. That was a good thing, but that you let yourself get mixed up in that mess in the first place… I doubt if she can ever truly let it go.”

He pressed his lips together and I recognized the stubborn gesture from both Camille and Father. Yes, Shamas was family, all right.

“And… she is happy. She has three husbands and I doubt if they’d welcome a fourth.” I hesitated to remind him of that fact. For one thing, I really had no clue as to how Smoky, Morio, and Trillian would feel about Shamas horning in. I could place a good bet, but I wasn’t positive. But I also knew how betrayed Camille had felt and I wasn’t going to ever chance that happening again.

“You’re right, of course. And hanging on here, even though I try to help, it’s not good for me to watch her with them. Her pity is worse than her anger.” He inhaled deeply, his chest rising, then let out a sharp, strong breath. “My mind’s made up. I’m going home to Otherworld, and I’m going to offer my services to King Vodox. I’m sure he’ll take me on.”

“My guess is that if Lethesanar herself were still in office, she’d take you back into the fold. Be careful over there, though. She still walks free somewhere, and she has a long memory.” I reached out, took his hand.

“I will. You haven’t seen the last of me yet.” He stood, kissing the top of my hand gently. “Thank you, Menolly. I’ve been wrestling with this for some time. You helped me see what I needed to see. There is no home here for me. At least not right now.”

Feeling both vaguely guilty and unsure I’d done the right thing, I squeezed his fingers, then let go. “When will you leave?”

“I hate to leave Chase on such short notice, but he really doesn’t need me that much. I’ll go now, before I change my mind. Please, tell the others for me. I don’t want any protracted good-byes or scenes. And… if I were to see Camille again… I’d probably change my mind.” And with that, he turned and headed back to the shed we’d converted into a studio for Roz, Vanzir, and Shamas.

I watched him go, thinking maybe I should call him back. Maybe I should stop him. But I kept my mouth shut, and ten minutes later, I watched as he silently emerged from the studio again, a knapsack over his back, and headed down the driveway. He’d be heading to Grandmother Coyote’s portal… and then home.

As Shamas vanished from sight, I realized that I was thoroughly soaked. I didn’t feel the chill as badly as nonvamps, but it wasn’t pleasant either. And the walk had brought me very little in the way of peace of mind.

I turned back to the house, and when I got inside and locked the door, I stripped off my wet clothes and shimmied into a pair of PJs I kept in the laundry room. I had no intention of disrupting Nerissa’s sleep until I had to be in bed and safely away from sunrise. As I padded into the living room, I saw Delilah sitting there, watching TV with the sound turned down low. She flashed me a pale grin and patted the cushion next to her.

“Kitten, what are you doing up?” I headed over to her side and situated myself next to her on the sofa. She was in her Hello Kitty nightshirt, with an afghan wrapped around her legs.

“I couldn’t sleep. Lash told me she’s going home in the morning. That she’s not going to interfere with my relationship with Shade. She said she had a long talk with you. Thanks… I was afraid she might try to break us up.” She was clutching a bowl of Cheetos, staring at the TV.

I glanced at the set. She was watching The House on Haunted Hill. Vincent Price was looming in the foreground, and the music was cueing up for an ominous scene. I leaned against Delilah’s arm, wrapping my own through the crook of her elbow.

“Lash won’t bother you.” I paused, then added, “Speaking of talks… I just saw Shamas outside. He left for Otherworld tonight, Kitten. He’s going to enlist in King Vodox’s army of sorcerers to try and stop the storm.”

She stopped, her hand midair, still clutching a handful of the orange cheese puffs. “Wow. I didn’t expect to hear that.”

Stuffing the snacks in her mouth, she tried to say something else but just showered the afghan with a sputter of crumbs. I snorted and handed her the glass of milk that was on the coffee table and she took a long sip, clearing her throat.

After she’d wiped her mouth, she muted the sound on the TV. “So what do you think Camille will say about him leaving?”

“I don’t think she feels the same way he does. I finally got him to admit that he’s never stopped loving her, and to be honest? I think maybe it’s a good thing he’s going away. I doubt if he’ll ever shake his infatuation with her, but maybe if he’s not around her all the time, he can move on.”

“There’s one little problem with that.” Delilah frowned, shaking the crumbs off the blanket. “Suppose he goes over there and gets himself killed? You know how dangerous it is there. How is Camille going to feel then? If she even so much as suspects that he went there to get away from her, she’ll blame herself.”

It hit me that, at times, Kitten was much more astute than I was. Both of my sisters were. I didn’t see the world in the nuances they did, and for me, life seemed like it should be more straightforward than it really was.

“Fuck. I hadn’t thought of that. I guess then we have to stress that he went home because he wanted to help in the war efforts. Leave her all the way out of this one. Tell her that… well… tell her the truth. He told me he felt like he needed a cause to work for—to believe in.” While that wasn’t quite the truth, it would do for now and it was close enough to what he’d said that I didn’t really feel like I was lying.

Delilah nodded. “Makes sense to me. I know he’s been basically just putting in time with Chase. I don’t know if he really liked the job or not.”

“Okay then, we tell Camille that Shamas felt like his talents could better be utilized back in Otherworld, so he went home to help.”

With that, Delilah turned up the sound again and I sat beside her in comfortable silence, snuggling a little, as we watched Vincent Price and the forces of the dark. As the movie droned on, Delilah fell asleep and I covered her with her afghan and turned off the television. It was still an hour or so till dawn, but I decided to go curl up next to Nerissa and rest my eyes. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until dawn, but as I crawled into bed and felt her gentle pulse next to me, and the warmth of her body, I was able to drift in the comfort of being next to the person I loved most in the world.

The next evening, I awoke to find that Nerissa had left me a little love note on the pillow when she’d headed out for work. I kissed it, then tucked it away in my memento box, and headed upstairs. As I entered the kitchen, the first thing that hit me was that tomorrow night was Samhain Eve—October thirty-first. The second thing that nearly hit me was Hanna.

She was bustling from the fridge to the counter, her arms full of vegetables. A thick pack of steaks sat on the other side of the stove, and I could see Trillian on the back porch. He had fired up the grill and by the Kiss the Cook apron he was wearing, it was my guess he’d been dubbed the grill master for the evening. As he watched over the crackling flames, Bruce was sitting on the counter next to him, and they were talking.

Then I remembered: Our cousin Daniel was coming over for dinner. I glanced at the clock. He was due here around six, and it was a little past five now, so we had an hour.

“Excuse me,” Vanzir darted in front of me, a basket on his arm. It was filled with fresh herbs from Iris’s greenhouse. Camille was chasing after him, waving a trowel.

“You give those back! I was going to bundle them up to hang dry!”

“Only when you say please! I helped you harvest the damned things and then you turned around and squirted me with the plant mister.” Vanzir held the basket over her head, just out of her reach.

At that moment, Smoky swooped in from behind him and plucked the basket away. He gave Vanzir a guarded look. “Don’t trifle with my wife.”

Vanzir snorted. “A little late—we trifled some time ago, but I don’t intend to do so again. Now teach your wife some manners and maybe I won’t go swiping her herbs.” But he was laughing, and—after a tense moment—Smoky let out a chuckle and handed the basket back to the demon.

“Very well. Camille, say thank you to the demon for his help.”

Camille glowered at him. “Big lizard. Okay, okay… thank you and I’m sorry I squirted you with the mister. It just seemed the thing to do at the moment.”

The phone rang, interrupting the chaos, and since I was the closest, I answered. A male voice I didn’t recognize came on the line, but I knew his name when he introduced himself.

“This is Tanne Baum. Am I talking to Delilah or Camille?”

It was Violet’s boyfriend. He was from the Black Forest Woodland Fae in Germany, and according to what Camille and Delilah told me, he had some sort of bond with Violet that allowed him to know she was still alive.

“Hi, and no. I’m Menolly, their sister. What can I do for you?”

A pause. Then, “I have some news on Violet—I performed the ritual I told your sisters I was going to do. I don’t know exactly where she is, but I did come up with some information that might help find her. Can you meet me tonight?”

I glanced at the clock. Dinner with Daniel would probably take a couple of hours, at least. “It will have to be later tonight. Ten P.M. okay for you?”

He paused, then, with a resigned sigh, acceded. “Yes, if we have to wait till then, that will work. I suppose she’s been missing so long now that another couple of hours isn’t going to hurt anything. Where shall we meet?”

I frowned. “What about the Starbucks on Blackthorn Street? It’s on the corner, cross street Wales Avenue. They’re open half the night.” Also, the coffee shop was on the outskirt of Belles-Faire, which meant a shorter drive for us.

Tanne grunted and I heard the scribbling of pencil on paper. “I’ve got it noted down. I’ll see you at ten. And, Menolly, thank you. And your sisters.” And with that, he hung up.

“Who was that?” Camille had her basket of herbs and was sitting at the table, tying them up in bundles to hang from the ceiling out on the back porch.

“Tanne Baum. We’re meeting him at ten tonight, at the Blackthorn Starbucks. He thinks he has a lead on Violet—said something about a ritual he told you he was going to do?”

“Oh thank gods.” Delilah stopped in the middle of frosting cupcakes. She set the piping bag down and turned. “I hope he’s right. This whole mess with Lowestar Radcliffe and Violet has gotten shoved to the side by everything else that’s been happening, and I keep thinking, where is she? Is she all right? What must she be thinking now?”

“Well, we’ll meet him after we talk to Daniel and see what he has to say. Meanwhile, what can I do?” I jumped up, eager to be busy, but the phone rang again. This time it was my cell phone, and it was Nerissa.

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry but I’m going to have to work late tonight. Chase is, too, but he’s already called Iris to tell her. So don’t wait dinner for either of us. We have a rather sticky situation here—nothing you guys need to know about, but it’s not very much fun. And Chase needs me here to smooth the path over between a disgruntled FBH family and their all-too-volatile OW houseguest. A few broken bones involved, and some very hurt feelings and threats of lawsuits and further assaults.”

“That’s going to take all evening? Sounds like an easy situation to me.” Of course, compared to the crap we’d been through, anything less sounded easy.

“Well, there are extenuating circumstances. Father of the household has a daughter who is seventeen and pregnant from the very handsome, very charming young man from Otherworld. The two obviously are down with each other, but Daddy is threatening to slap him with a statutory rape charge. That’s what started the argument.” Nerissa sounded put out and I did not blame her. That sort of crap was a ridiculous waste of the authorities’ time.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. That’s… yeah. I can see. Tread lightly and try not to break any skulls, though if you need some help, I’ll come down there and shake some sense into the pair of them. What about the girl?” I had a feeling she wasn’t playing any sort of victim in this case.

“She’s enjoying it. I think it tickles her to see Daddy and Lover Boy fighting it out. I have a feeling the little princess doesn’t get much attention otherwise.” Nerissa’s laugh was derogatory, and yet I also sensed a hint of sadness there. “So yeah, don’t count on us for dinner. We’ll grab something here. I’ll call before I’m headed home.”

I punched the End Talk button and slid the phone in the holster hanging off one of my belt loops. My jeans were too tight for me to put anything in the pockets. As I once again turned my attention to the bustle of the kitchen, I thought about mentioning Shamas’s departure but it wasn’t really the time for that. Camille would have to know by tomorrow, but I didn’t want to throw off the rest of the evening. I could tell her afterward—on the way to meet Tanne Baum.

I tried to find a way to help out with the rest of dinner, but there just wasn’t room. Too many cooks, and all that. So I meandered into the living room. The first thing I saw was Delilah’s laptop, sitting open. And then I noticed a file folder next to it, open. I could tell it had come from Carter’s because he used specially colored folders, and a special archival brand, and this was no ordinary cream-colored file.

As I sat down, nosy, and flipped through the articles in the folder, I realized they were about the Farantino Building. That’s right! Camille had said Carter gave them a folder on the building, but then with the disaster in Elqaneve, everything had slid by the wayside. Apparently somebody had decided to dig it out today.

There wasn’t much in the file—a few clips out of the Seattle Post’s business section. A couple from the Seattle Tattler’s social section—the damned rag was going strong fifty years back, long before the Fae and Supes were out of the closet. Then, there were Carter’s notes. Indications of unusual spiritual activity, in his spidery, very clear, handwriting. The dates went back to around 1914… a few years after the building was erected. All in all, there had been some hints of daemonic activity since near the beginning, but it was strung out enough to where, unless someone was specifically keeping an eye on the building, it wouldn’t have been all that noticeable.

So… let’s see.

Fact number one. Lowestar was attempting to wake a sleeping demigod. Which meant that Suvika—the demigod in question—had to be sleeping somewhere.

Hmm… it occurred to me that we hadn’t looked into him much yet. We hadn’t had the time. I frowned. Maybe there was some information online, though I rather doubted it. He was obscure, and all we knew about him was that he was one of the triple lords of debauchery and vice. What pantheon or mythos he hailed from, I wasn’t sure. At first, with his name, I’d thought maybe Hindu or Asian, but that felt off to some degree.

I pulled up a new browser and typed “Suvika” into Howl, a new search engine that was aimed at Supes and dealt first and foremost with magical information. A few seconds later, a handful of links came up. I scanned through them. Most looked like reference material.

Clicking on the first one took me to a brief, four-line entry in the MythicaPedia. Nothing there we didn’t already know. I clicked back to the listings and tried the second. Again, a brief mention, only this time whoever had Tumblr’d the information had included a painting that was supposedly of the three lords of vice. The drawing looked almost Japanese in origin, but I had the feeling it wasn’t. A third link led to nowhere, and a fourth. But on the fifth, I realized I’d stumbled onto something.

It was a personal entry in a magical blog that an FBH pagan had written. I glanced at the profile of the blogger, but it was only a magical name—and no information on where the writer was actually from or who he really was. But TheoLogos, the blogger, had apparently discovered mention of the demigod somewhere.

I cast a Circle of Summoning and used the root powder my grandmother taught me how to make. I was determined to bring Suvika here, to my life, even though the old texts say he is sleeping in his tomb. The conjuration worked, all right, but it wasn’t the demigod who showed up. Instead a handsome man, tanned with a glow that seemed to emanate through his clothing, appeared. He was in modern wear—and I would have mistaken him for a human if I passed him on the street.

When I asked him who he was, he would not say. He only laughed and told me I was foolish and lucky— foolish because I had no idea what I had asked for, and lucky, because my demands were not granted. And then, he told me that should Suvika wake for the wrong person, he would rain down mayhem and anguish on the summoner, and his freedom would be complete.

If not controlled by the proper channel, Suvika would be all too willing to rampage through the city and take whatever—and whoever—he wanted. And then, with a pale flash of light, the demon—I believe it was a demon, though he might as well be a guardian angel—vanished. I decided to abandon my quest to waken Suvika and concentrate on invoking someone more compliant.

Here, the entry ended, and I quickly scanned the entries before and after, but there were no further mentions of Suvika. Only haphazard ramblings of a wannabe magician who had gotten cocky, dove in over his head, and then had gotten very, very lucky. But who had he summoned? Obviously a creature from the Subterranean Realms.

I jotted down a few notes and bookmarked the site, then checked out the remaining links. The first three added nothing we didn’t already know, but the fourth was from a university site. Frowning—usually universities kept their online records to academic papers and the like—I scanned the page, trying to figure out what I was reading. The page looked like an image rather than text, and then it hit me. I was reading what appeared to be an old—perhaps ancient—book or scroll that had been scanned into the university’s databanks. And there, in a few concise sentences below a line of runes, was the entry I was looking for.

Suvika will waken from his tomb deep in the ethers. Born of a goddess and a daemon, when he rises, gold and silver will fly to his beck and call. Suvika will lay claim to all women he finds suitable for his use, and their screams will echo against the chamber walls. His carnal lust is equal in nature only to his lust for coin. And then, when his thirst for both is sated, he will waken his brothers, Viatu and Levvial, and they will use the greed of men to control the world. As was in the days of Atlantea, and then again in Rome, so shall be the new regime until once again, their enemies rock them back to sleep until the next turn of the cycle.

Okay then, that was promising. Not. I didn’t much like the sound of any of that, and I had no doubt that if Lowestar Radcliffe was able to wake up this demigod, we’d all be in for a world of hurt.

Using the URL, I followed the path back to see if there was any information about what it was I was looking at. The trail led me to an entry about an archaeological find deep in a group of caverns in Mongolia. Among the antiquities discovered there were a group of scrolls, one of which I’d been reading. They had all been scanned in, but only some of them translated—hence I’d lucked out by finding that one in particular. Who knew what the others held? But by what I could piece together, it appeared that Suvika had originated as either a Mongolian or a Finnish deity—the former seemed more likely.

Considering the power-crazed lust the Khans had possessed, it didn’t seem surprising to find Suvika attached to that culture. Feeling like we had a little more of a handle on things, I finished my notes as the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” I headed to the front door. As I swung it open, a short, thin man with brilliant blue eyes was standing there. He was grace, fluid in motion, and his hair looked like he’d just crawled out of bed but it was a good messy. He was in his late forties, perhaps early fifties, but he looked trim and fit. Dressed in a pair of indigo wash jeans with a button-down silver shirt and a black blazer over the top, he was wearing sneakers—seemingly incongruous to his outfit, but when I took the entire picture in, he made it all work. Daniel had two bottles of what looked like very expensive wine under his arm. I nodded for him to enter and he silently slid past me.

Not sure if he’d remember me, I held out my hand to him. “Cousin Daniel? I’m—”

“Menolly. I remember.” He handed me one of the bottles, then took my other hand briefly, pressing my fingers with a light, deft touch. Just as quickly, he let go and looked around. “Am I early?”

“Not to worry—everybody’s just in the kitchen getting ready for dinner. Come on in and meet the gang.” I wasn’t sure just how he’d react when he realized he was talking to a dragon, a youkai, a demon, an incubus, and whoever else might be hanging around. But we might as well test him out and see how much he was able to stand.

As I escorted him into the kitchen, I put the bottle I was carrying on the table and he followed suit. Camille and Delilah gave delighted little waves. I grinned. Suddenly, it seemed so very cool to have our very own FBH cousin in the room with us.

“You know Camille and Delilah. But the rest—this is part of our extended family.” I turned to Smoky, getting ready to introduce him.

But Daniel surprised us all. He interrupted with a flourish. “Smoky—I hear rumors you might be a dragon? And you”—he turned to Vanzir—“you are some sort of demon, I believe. And unless I miss my guess—Morio, is it? Camille’s second husband and a youkai? And Trillian—her third? A Svartan, I gather. You are all lucky men.”

As he went around, getting everybody’s name and background right, including Hanna’s, I stared at him, openmouthed. How the hell did he know who everyone was? Something about his easy familiarity unsettled me. We needed to figure out just how our cousin was privy to all our secrets.