“I’ll need two hours and Janet,” I whispered to Baldwin as we withdrew.
Together Janet and I freed the compound from its invisible barbed-wire perimeter. There was one alarm spell we had to leave in place, however. It was linked directly back to Knox, and I feared that even tinkering with the knots would alert him to our presence.
“He’s a clever bugger,” Janet said, wiping a tired hand across her eyes.
“Too clever for his own good. His spells were lazy,” I said. “Too many crossings, not enough threads.”
“When this is all over, we are going to have several evenings by the fireside where you explain what you just said,” Janet warned.
“When this is over, and Matthew is home, I’ll happily sit by the fireside for the rest of my life,” I replied.
Gallowglass’s hovering presence reminded me that time was passing.
“Time to go,” I said briskly, nodding toward the silent Gael.
Gallowglass insisted we eat something and took us to a café in Chelm. There I managed to swallow down some tea and two bites of hot-milk cake while the warmth from the clanging radiator thawed my extremities.
As the minutes ticked by, the regular metallic sounds from the café’s heating system began to sound like warning bells. Finally Gallowglass announced that the hour had come when we were to meet up with Marcus’s army.
He took us to a prewar house on the outskirts of town. Its owner had been happy to hand over the keys and head to warmer climes in exchange for a hefty cash vacation fund and the promise that he would find his leaking roof fixed when he returned.
The vampire knights who were assembled in the cellar were mostly unfamiliar to me, though I did recognize a few faces from the twins’ christening. As I looked at them, rugged of line and quietly ready for whatever awaited them below, I was struck by the fact that these were warriors who had fought in modern world wars and revolutions, as well as medieval Crusades. They were some of the finest soldiers who had ever lived, and like all soldiers they were prepared to sacrifice their lives for something greater than themselves.
Fernando gave his final orders while Gallowglass opened a makeshift door. Beyond it was a small ledge and a rickety ladder that led down into darkness.
“Godspeed,” Gallowglass whispered as the first of the vampires dropped out of sight and landed silently on the ground below.
We waited while the knights chosen to destroy Benjamin’s hunting party did their work. Still nervous that someone might alert him to our presence and that he might respond by taking Matthew’s life, I stared fixedly at the earth between my feet.
It was excruciating. There was no way to receive any progress reports. For all we knew, Marcus’s knights could have met with unexpected resistance. Benjamin might have sent out more of his children to hunt. He might have sent out none.
“This is the hell of war,” said Gallowglass. “It’s not the fighting or even the dying that destroys you. It’s the wondering.”
No more than an hour later—though it felt like days—Giles pushed open the door. His shirt was stained with gore. There was no way to determine how much of it belonged to him and what might be traces of Benjamin’s now-dead children. He beckoned us forward.
“Clear,” he told Gallowglass. “But be careful. The tunnels echo, so watch your step.”
Gallowglass handed Janet down and then me, making no use of the waiting ladder with its rusted metal treads that might give us away. It was so dark in the tunnel that I couldn’t see the faces of the vampires who caught us, but I could smell the battle on them.
We hurried along the tunnel with as much speed as our need for silence allowed. Given the darkness, I was glad to have a vampire on each arm to steer me around the bends and would have fallen several times without the assistance of their keen eyes and quick reflexes.
Baldwin and Fernando were waiting for us at the intersection of three tunnels. Two blood-spattered mounds covered with tarps and a powdery white substance that gave off a faint glow marked where Benjamin’s children had met their death.
“We covered the heads and bodies with quicklime to mask the scent,” Fernando said. “It won’t eliminate it completely, but it should buy us some time.”
“How many?” Gallowglass asked.
“Nine,” Baldwin replied. One of his hands was completely clean and bore a sword, the other was caked with substances I preferred not to identify. The contrast made my stomach heave.
“How many are still inside?” Janet murmured.
“At least another nine, probably more.” Baldwin didn’t look worried at the prospect. “If they’re anything like this lot, you can expect them to be cocksure and clever.”
“Dirty fighters, too,” Fernando said.
“As expected,” Gallowglass said, his tone easy and relaxed. “We’ll be waiting for your signal to move into the compound. Good luck, Auntie.”
Baldwin whisked me away before I could say a word of farewell to Gallowglass and Fernando. Perhaps it was better that way, since the single glance I cast over my shoulder captured faces that were etched with exhaustion.
The tunnel that Baldwin took us through led to the gates outside Benjamin’s compound where Ysabeau and Hamish were waiting. With all the wards down save the one on the gate that led directly to Knox, the only risk was that a vampire’s keen eyes would spot us.
Janet reduced that possibility with an all-encompassing disguising spell that concealed not only me but everybody within twenty feet.
“Where’s Marcus?” I had expected to see him here.
Hamish pointed.
Marcus was already inside the perimeter, propped in the crook of a tree, a rifle aimed at a window. He must have breached the compound’s stone walls by swinging from tree limb to tree limb. With no wards to worry about, provided he didn’t use the gate, Marcus had taken advantage of the pause in the action and would now provide cover for us as we went through the gate and entered the front door.
“Sharpshooter,” commented Baldwin.
“Marcus learned to handle a gun as a warmblood. He hunted squirrels when he was a child,” added Ysabeau. “Smaller and faster than vampires, I’m told.”
Marcus never acknowledged our presence, but he knew we were there. Janet and I set to work on the final knots that bound the alarm spell to Knox. She cast an anchoring spell, the kind witches used to shore up the foundations of their houses and keep their children from wandering away, and as I unbound the ward, I redirected its energy toward her. Our hope was that the spell wouldn’t even notice that the heavy object it now guarded was a granite boulder and not a massive iron gate.
It worked.