Serpent's Kiss (Elder Races #3)(101)

Then Julian called across the open space, in his rough, familiar battleground roar, “All you have to do to stop this is keep your promise and return to the island. You can spend your remaining days in peace.”

She looked down and met Rune’s blazing gaze. “I can’t do that, Julian.”

“You would really rather go to war? How could you kill your own people?”

“I gave them their chance,” she said. “And my give-a-shit button’s broken, baby.” She didn’t recognize her own voice.

Rune came up on one knee. Too many creatures chambered too many rounds. She glanced down, and he nodded to her. He gave her a small private smile. It had been so beautiful for too brief a time. She put a hand on Rune’s good shoulder and began to whisper the spell that would rain fire. She poured all her Power into the incantation.

Then the cyclone returned.

It blasted into the open area with such force, the Earth shook. Buildings rattled in a half-mile radius. Later the news channels would state the shockwave from the earthquake was felt three hundred miles away. Many of the Nightkind creatures cried out in fear and fell to the ground to cover their heads.

Rune stood and put his good arm around Carling as a prince of the Djinn formed in front of them. Khalil’s strange diamond eyes and elegant inhuman features held a fierce smile.

“Now you will be the one to owe me a favor,” said the Djinn to the Vampyre sorceress.

She released all her pent-up Power with a gasp. “Yes,” she said.

“Where?”

“The Oracle in Louisville,” she said rapidly.

Across the open square, Julian roared orders. His Nightkind forces began to fire. But none of their bullets hit their targets. The cyclone enveloped Rune and Carling and took them away.

The trip was as strange and as chaotic as anything Carling had experienced. She turned and put her arms around Rune to hold him tight as a howling wind surrounded them. In the center of the cyclone, Khalil gripped them to his lean, hard chest. Then the world materialized around them again, in the shape of a hot, humid Midwestern night.

As soon as Rune and Carling’s feet touched the ground, Khalil released them. Carling was slow to relax her clench on Rune’s waist, and she noticed his good arm was just as reluctant to loosen on her. The Djinn had not disappeared as he had the previous times he had come. Instead, he stood beside them and surveyed the scene with as much curiosity as they did.

They weren’t actually in the city of Louisville but instead were some distance out, because the night was dark and quiet, populated with the shadowed greenery of deciduous trees and grass, and filled with the sound of crickets and cicadas. Hundreds of fireflies blanketed the area, winking yellow lights. The scene felt saturated with a very old Power.

They stood in a long gravel driveway that led up to an old sprawling two-story farmhouse. They had to have left San Francisco sometime after midnight, so that meant it was after 3:00 A.M. in Kentucky. A light was on inside the house. They could all clearly hear the sound of a fussing baby. There was the smell of a nearby river. Carling sensed the cool, powerful rush of water.

“Is that the Ohio River?” she asked Khalil.

“Yes,” he said. The Djinn stood with his hands on his hips. His head was cocked as he regarded the house.

Even though the dark night outside was lit only by stars and dotted with electric lights off in the distance, Carling’s gaze was sensitive enough she could see the lines of pain on Rune’s face as he cradled his arm. “We need to get you inside,” she said. She walked up the front steps of the farmhouse to the wide covered porch, followed by Rune and Khalil. A motion-sensitive porch light came on as they approached the house. Carling knocked on the door.

Light rapid footsteps approached, then suddenly the door yanked open. A slim, young human woman stood in the doorway with a baby on her hip. The woman was twenty-three or twentyfour years old, with features that might be classified as more interesting than pretty, and she had short flyaway, strawberry blonde hair. She was disheveled and hollow-eyed, and dressed in shabby plaid flannel pants and an oversized gray T-shirt.

The baby was a boy, perhaps nine months old. He looked as disheveled and hollow-eyed as the woman, his small round face splotchy from crying. For a moment he regarded them with as much curiosity as they regarded him. Then he knuckled one of his ears, turned to plop his face into the woman’s neck, and emitted a ragged, miserable wail.

The woman looked at them with unfriendly eyes. “What the hell are you doing, knocking at someone’s door at three thirty in the morning?”

Carling said, “We’re looking for the Oracle.”

“This couldn’t wait until seven?” the woman snapped. She patted the boy’s small back and bounced him with the kind of tiredness of someone who had been doing the same thing for some time now. “Hell, until six? What’s the matter with you people, anyway? Can’t you see I’ve got a sick baby on my hands? Go away and don’t come back until it’s a decent time.”

Khalil said, “You’re the Oracle?”

The Djinn sounded as surprised as Carling felt, and Rune looked.

“You were expecting a gold shrine and a gaggle of virgins draped in pleated white sheets?” the young woman said. “Yes, I’m the Oracle.”

Carling raised her eyebrows and looked beyond the woman at the train wreck of a living room. A scuffed hardwood floor was covered by an old shabby area rug that was littered with toys. Textbooks and coffee cups were piled on the equally shabby furniture. One armchair held a wicker basket piled high with unfolded laundry. The house smelled like sour baby vomit.