Immortals After Dark 09 - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

on the line, Garreth dressed and loaded his pack, intending to set out at once.
    “Yello?”
    “I need you to scry for Lousha,” he said. “You told me once that you could.”
    “Yeah, I can get you in her vicinity.”
    Garreth had taken Lucia’s scent into him and could find her from miles away. “That’ll work.” Witches could come in handy, he supposed.
    “But I don’t do gratis.”
    Garreth bluidy hated witches! “Charge me what you will! Just give me the fucking coordinates.”
    In the background, he heard Bowen say, “Mari, never let it be said that I doona support your extortion—”
    “Entrepreneurial-ness,” she corrected.
    “But a family discount, love, would no’ be amiss.”
    “The
whole
family? Fine,” she said. “I’m scrying.” While Garreth waited, she groused about how extended the “MacRieve pack” was.
    Suddenly she sucked in a breath. “Garreth, I don’t know why Lucia’s going to this particular place, but it’s a confluence of evil. Great evil.”
    “Aye, I ken that,” he snapped, then added impatiently, “Home of an evil god I’m off to murder. So be quick with the details, witch!”
    A woman’s severed leg.
    It’d been left at the entrance to Cruach’s lair—as if in greeting.
    Yet when Lucia had arrived at twilight two hours ago, she’d found no Cromites there to battle, and everything about the situation had screamed, “Trap!”
    Now as she awaited Cruach’s rising, pacing in front of the cave with her bow strapped over her shoulder, her mind raced, flitting from memory to memory: the look on MacRieve’s face just before the tranquilizer took hold, her mad dash out of Iquitos, the interminable plane ride to these cold Northlands.
    All of that had culminated in her hike through these barren woods to Cruach’s lair. The forest here was a fitting precursor to his cave. Filled with shadows and petrifiedtrees, it was separated forever from the cleansing ocean by Cruach’s foul mountain.
    She’d never had difficulties finding this place even after so much time had passed. Nothing ever grew around the yawning opening, and old, bleached bones were perpetually strewn before it.
    Pacing, thoughts flitting…
Lucia was beset with worry about Regin, who was still missing after five days. After unsuccessfully calling Nïx again and again, Lucia had begun harassing Annika.
    Annika had already warped past aneurismal straight into action, dispatching search parties and hiring witches to scry. Neither had turned up a trace of Regin.
    Who’d abducted her? Surely it was the berserker, Aidan the Fierce, reincarnated once more. But Aidan had never
taken
Regin before.
    Well, at least not without witnesses.
    Lucia needed to get this killing over with and return to locate her sister. She
yearned
for this to end. And yet she knew how risky it would be to do anything before Cruach made his move….
    In the past, the longest they’d had to wait for him to emerge was two days—Lucia’s nightmares had proved chillingly accurate. So as bad as they’d been the last few nights, why was he not coming forth?
    Trap.
    From her thigh quiver, she drew the dieumort out once more, gazing at the wooden shaft and ancient feathers. It was so unlike Skathi’s perfect golden arrows, and yet Lucia was more confident in her weapon than she’d ever been. On the plane ride here, she’d noticedthe finest inscriptions near the arrowhead and had again sensed the latent power.
    She’d begun to suspect the arrow had been carved from an enchanted world tree,
a tree of life
. There were fewer than a dozen in number scattered all over the earth, but one was rumored to grow in the Amazon.
    What better way to defeat a being that reveled in carnage and death?
    And what better way to get myself killed?
she thought as she replaced the dieumort amid her regular arrows. She was uneasy safeguarding such a weapon—one of the most powerful ever to exist. It was only a matter of time before some enemy came after her, and after this prize. She wanted to use the arrow as soon as possible, to extinguish it—and Cruach—forever.
    A chill wind blew, and she pulled her jacket closer, wishing she was back in the sultry warmth of the Amazon with MacRieve. Instead of waiting at the gates of hell. Which was no exaggeration.
    She couldn’t imagine a more gruesome place. Decorated with piles of rotting bodies and infested with vermin, the cavern was a fitting hovel for the monster within. She remembered how Cruach