The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(26)

“No,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”

“Good.”

She gripped his arm firmly, just above the elbow, and propelled him across the kitchen. The audience at the table, still silent, tracked his progress. Before he quite knew what was happening, Mab had opened a door and shoved him down a flight of wooden stairs.

“Stay here,” she said. “Until someone comes for you.” The door shut. A key scraped in the lock.

The cellar was dark and, as far as he could tell, largely empty. The floor was concrete. Given the expanse of swamp Arthur had glimpsed as Mab landed, he could only assume some kind of magic kept the subterranean room dry. Or relatively dry, anyway. The air smelled strongly of mold.

When dawn broke, he found that one small window provided the only illumination in the space. He almost wished it dark again. Water pooled at the edges of the room, but in the center, the concrete bore rusty stains. Blood.

Three days passed, by Arthur’s best estimation, before Mab reappeared. In the meantime, food and drink were delivered at regular intervals, set at the top of the stair by a woman with red hair. A witch, he thought, judging from her pentagram pendant and the spiraling tattoo on her left forearm. She also might have been deaf and dumb for all the attention she paid Arthur’s questions. With nothing to occupy him, he paced the damp space, consumed by grief and fear, and wondering what was to become of him.

Eventually, the door opened, admitting an older Nephil male. He introduced himself as Evander, and took Arthur up the stairs. Mab was the new Druid clan alpha, Evander told him. When Arthur asked to speak with Mab, he was told she was tending her business concerns in Houston. Arthur was to live here, in Demon’s Hollow, with his American kin. Perhaps the alpha would speak to him when she returned. Or perhaps not.

Arthur emerged from the cellar to find that the American Nephilim were as far outside his experience as it was possible to be. The adept males were a crude, rough set. Their witches were blatantly sensual creatures, who talked quite a lot, in an ear-piercing Southern accent Arthur could barely follow. There were several dormants as well, including two girls. One was only a small child. The other was the wild blond with the jade eyes.

Her name was Cybele. She was tall, taller than he was, and a year older. Her white-blond hair, most often seen flowing down her back in a riot of curls, mesmerized him. She usually went barefoot, haphazardly dressed in ripped jeans. She owned any number of delicate, flowery blouses.

She seemed not quite real, more like an elemental force than a person. An elemental force that was somehow already part of himself. Arthur didn’t quite know what to make of his jumbled feelings toward her, so he did his best to hide them. He was wary around her. Initially, he discouraged her repeated attempts to make friends.

Even so, he thought she sensed the connection between them, too. It was there in the air between them, invisible, but as real as the electricity that heralded a lightning storm. Cybele, it turned out, wasn’t easily dissuaded once she’d set her mind on something. She just wasn’t willing to let Arthur go his own way. She insisted on being his friend, whether he wanted one or not. Truth to tell, he was grateful for her persistence. She was the one good thing in his bewilderingly strange new life at Demon’s Hollow.

He had nightmares of that last night at T?’r Cythraul. When he woke, Cybele was always beside him. Gradually, let her in. She listened gravely as he described, in halting tones, about the night his parents died.

She told him what had happened during the three days he’d been locked in the cellar.

He’d been stunned. Sick to the core. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. Magnus, Arthur’s Scots cousin, dead. The rest of his father’s family had offered fealty and surrendered their touchstones to Mab. They’d accepted her rubies in return.

Mab had told Arthur’s kin that he’d died with his parents, Cybele whispered. They’d believed her, because Mab had given them his body. Had they never considered the possibility the body wasn’t his, that they’d been fooled by Mab’s magic?

After learning the truth, he’d wanted to die rather than stay in Texas. If not for Cybele, he might have done himself harm. She was the one bright light in the darkness his life had become. She was his touchstone, his hope. And once again, she was here, with him, when he needed her most. Believing in him. Waiting for him.

He went to her.

***

“What’s he doing?” Lucky asked in a stage whisper.

Holy shit on a biscuit! If Maweth weren’t immortal, the cherub could’ve taken a decade off his life.

He darted a glance at Dusek. Shimon Ben-Meir had left the room at least an hour ago. Since that time, Maweth’s master had remained standing motionless at his desk, gazing down at the fractured stone stele. Thankfully, he gave no sign of having heard Lucky’s outburst.

Maweth breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t know what he’s doing,” he hissed. “And for the thousandth time, keep your voice down.”

“O-kaay.” Deflated, the cherub fluttered to the floor.

A slight scratching sounded at the office door. Maweth came alert. Two visitors in one morning? Jeez-o-man, it was a regular circus in here today.

Dusek looked up, frowning. “Come.”

A somber, skeletal youth stepped into the room. Maweth had seen him a few times before. Lazlo, a Nephil dormant, resembled Dusek to a disturbing degree. Not in the way of a son and his father, though. More in the way of identical twins. If the second of those twins had been born fifty years after the first.