There were different kinds of doors. Ones that led to different places in the same world. Ones that led to different worlds. But there was a third kind of door, wasn’t there?
One that led to the place between worlds.
One that led nowhere.
Her hands started moving again, fingers racing to finish the spell.
* * *
The house hadn’t changed.
Alucard had stood outside the Emery estate countless times on countless nights, but hadn’t been inside, not since it was rebuilt. Hadn’t been able to cross that threshold. He’d wondered, of course, if it would look the same, or if only the shell had been reconstructed, the inside a blank slate, a crypt for a dead life.
But it had been resurrected.
Every pillar, every door. Works of art hung on the walls. Even the furniture had been replaced. Rhy must have thought it a kindness, an act of love, but standing inside the house now, Alucard felt haunted.
What was Lila doing here? How had she gotten from the Veil to his own abandoned estate?
Alucard looked around. They were standing in the front great room, just beyond the foyer. A corridor vanished to the right, and straight ahead a staircase led up to the second floor. If they continued past those stairs, deeper into the house, on the right would be his father’s office. On the left, a sitting room with a large stone hearth.
Alucard pulled off his own mask, casting it aside as he helped Kell the rest of the way to his feet.
“Get up,” he said. “Something is wrong.”
Kell fought to steady his breathing. He stared down at the black ring, still clutched in his hand.
“It should have taken me to her,” he said. “Or at least, to the other band.”
He looked around, then turned, and started down the hall.
“Wait,” hissed Alucard, as if afraid the slightest motion would wake the sleeping house. Kell didn’t go far, only a few strides, then knelt, and when he stood again, Alucard saw what he was holding: the other ring, hanging from a broken leather cord.
At that moment, a figure appeared at the top of the stairs.
Alucard went very still. He wanted to believe it was a shadow. A demon. A specter, haunting his dreams. But Berras Emery was none of those things.
He was a man, and he was coming down the stairs.
“Well, well, well,” he said, punctuating each word with the thud of his boots. “Look who finally decided to come home.”
He hadn’t noticed Kell, and for once the Antari had the sense to keep his mouth shut. Alucard glanced toward him, a look that said Go. A look that said Find her. A look that said, This is my fight.
Kell retreated into the shadows.
And Alucard stepped forward, into the light, to face his brother.
VII
Few things could knock Alucard off guard, but Berras Emery was one of them. He was so thrown by his brother’s appearance on the stairs that it took him a moment to notice the air around him, the way it shone, not with Berras’s dull green threads, but a web of blazing silver, bursting from the golden ring on his right hand. The one that had vanished from the queen’s workshop. The one that now granted Berras Antari magic.
Lila’s magic.
“I’ve been waiting for this, little brother.”
“You knew where I was,” said Alucard. “You could have come to visit.”
Berras reached the bottom of the stairs. “Hiding behind your palace walls.”
“Is that why you wanted the persalis?” asked Alucard.
Berras didn’t deny it. Didn’t feign ignorance about the doormaker, or the Hand, or the plot to kill the royal family. Alucard’s family. He just looked down at the golden ring on his thumb, and smiled.
“I wonder which element I’ll use.”
Alucard took a small step back, the groan of the floorboards concealing the way they shuddered as he pulled against them, drawing not on the wood but the packed earth below.
“I thought you favored your fists?” he said, dragging the soil up between the planks of wood as Berras flexed, and the silver magic brightened in warning.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Berras. “When I end your life, it will be with my own hands. But first—”
Alucard felt the brush of someone else’s will, a fist that tried to close around his bones, but he moved, just in time, threw up his hand, and the dirt came with it, a cloud of dust that blocked Berras’s view.
The grip fell away and he lunged, intending to circle his brother. To attack him from behind. If he couldn’t see him—a massive hand shot through the cloud, and closed around Alucard’s throat, slamming him back into the nearest wall. The cloud crumbled, blown away, revealing Berras, the silver threads dancing in his slate-blue eyes.