Luc swore again and thrust a hand through his hair. “Then we need to act now.”
Mo nodded and rose. “I’ll go ring the council and get the process moving.”
“Before you do,” Jason said, “do we know where she was infected? I’ll have to seal the area off until we can get it checked.”
“You won’t be checking it, the council will,” Mo said. “Wraiths are tricky critters to deal with.”
Jason hesitated and then nodded. “I’ll still need the location.”
Luc gave him the address then added, “She was sent there to investigate a possible Darkside disturbance.”
“What sort of disturbance?” Jason said. “I wasn’t informed about an attack in that area, and I should have been.”
“Residents reported screams and a thick smell of death in the apartment above them,” Luc said. “Noelle and Katie were sent to investigate—”
“Where’s Katie then?” Jason cut in sharply.
“Noelle couldn’t say. She can’t remember anything more than arriving there.”
Jason swore and turned to one of the men behind him. “Contact Kendrick and see if he’s got any further information.”
“Noelle was obviously infected within that apartment,” Mo said. “Wraiths cannot move around easily in our world—there’s far too much light pollution for them to survive more than a few minutes—and that means there has to be an active gateway present there.”
Jason frowned. “I didn’t think it was possible to create new gateways.”
“The dark elves are capable of creating minor gateways but for the most part don’t, as it generally costs their life. It’s more likely that if there is a gateway there, it’s simply a reformed one, especially given how old that part of London is.”
“My education is obviously lacking,” he said. “I had no idea gates could reform.”
“Gateways have never been static nor entirely stable. Whatever external force caused the gates to form between our two planes also likes to tear them apart.”
“Can we stop getting sidetracked?” Luc said, an edge in his voice. He waved a hand at his sister. “I need her fixed, Mo.”
She touched his arm lightly. “They’ll try their best, dear boy. I promise you that.”
She stepped past him and headed upstairs to make her calls. Luc took a deep breath, though it did little to calm his inner emotional turbulence because it continued to wash across my senses. He glanced at me. “What happened to the sword Noelle was carrying?”
“We moved it out of her reach.” I walked down to the shelf holding the pretty array of handmade soaps then reached up to the one above and grabbed the sword. The grip no longer held the charred remnants of Noelle’s fingers—Mo had obviously removed them when she’d placed the sword up here—but it was icy to the touch and made my skin itch unpleasantly. The edges of the black blade were frosted, and the steel had an odd, almost greasy sheen to it.
I shivered and hurried back. Luc accepted the sword with a frown. “We’ve a couple of examples of these blades in our archives, but they’re not soul swords, as such. As far as I’m aware, they were only ever used as conduits to channel whatever elemental force the dark elves were controlling.”
Which was basically what the two king swords did, even if Elysian also granted its user the ability to step fully into the gray.
“Given the coldness emanating from the metal, I take it the power this sword channeled is ice?” And if it did, why hadn’t Noelle used it on me?
Was it simply a matter of the infusion not being complete enough for her to fully control that portion of the blade’s power? Or did she have orders not to kill me? Considering what Max had said, that was possible, though her sword blow could have cleaved me in two had I missed catching it with the knives. And the man-mountain certainly hadn’t been playing around.
Luc nodded, his gaze still on the blade. “Dark elves used them to freeze and shatter opponents.”
“Which, when it comes to the many varied ways in which they like to kill, sounds a lot quicker and cleaner than most,” Jason commented.
“The archives suggest the opposite.” Luc turned the sword around and studied the top of the pommel.
“Mo said the sword was probably inhabited by an actual demon,” I commented.
Luc nodded again. “But I don’t think it was fused into the metal during smithing—which is what happened with our soul swords—but rather forced into the blade afterward.”
I frowned. “What makes you think that?”
He turned the sword around. There was a small hole on top of the pommel where the button usually sat. “The entire hilt is hollow.”
“What benefit would forcing a demon into the sword have, though?” Jason asked.
I glanced at him. “It’s possible it might have imbued the user with a demon’s speed or strength.”
“And did it?” Luc’s gaze jumped to mine. The jade depths were turbulent and deeply worried. He knew well enough that his sister might not come out of this alive.
I hesitated. “She was very strong, but I couldn’t say whether that was her natural strength or demon infused. I was too busy concentrating on surviving.”
His gaze dropped back to the sword, but not before I’d caught not only another flash of anger but also guilt. It was then I realized why—he’d failed once already to save someone he loved. He didn’t want to repeat that failure with his sister, even if this situation was entirely different and utterly beyond his control.
I clenched my fingers and resisted the urge to wrap my arms around him and comfort him. Tell him that she’d be all right, even if I suspected that was a lie.
But this was neither the time nor the place, and I doubted he’d have appreciated it anyway. If I’d learned anything about this man, it was the fact that he was determined to keep his emotions—and me—at arm’s length until this was all over and we were safe.
“One thing I don’t understand,” I said, “is why give Noelle the sword? If they wanted to use her to get at either Mo or me, why not do so openly? She’s preternatural and your sister—I would have trusted her.”
“I suspect they didn’t intend for her to be seen or captured,” Mo said as she clattered down the stairs. “They probably meant her to do nothing more than weave a doorway into my magic so that the half-blood giant could enter. But when you confronted her, the wraith’s natural instinct for destruction and death kicked in.”
“Meaning it wanted them both to die?” Luc said incredulously. “How does killing its host when it’s not in its own environment even make sense?”
“Demonic actions don’t always make sense,” Mo said. “You should know that well enough.”
Luc’s answering grunt was not a happy sound. “Any luck with the High Council?”
She nodded and handed him a piece of paper. “The displacement team will meet you both here—it’s a secure if old facility designed to cater for infestations such as this.”
Luc glanced at the paper and then shoved it into his pocket. “You’re not coming with us?”