Anne Bishop - Belladonna

But there were Dark hearts in every landscape, and It could always reach them .

And one of them would be able to find Belladonna’s companions—and destroy them.

“What, exactly, am I looking for?” Sebastian asked for the third time.

Lee was ready to pound his cousin’s head against a wall. “I told you. I don’t know exactly . Someone who doesn’t belong. Someone…different.”

Sebastian looked down the Den’s main street, where two men and a succubus were staggering toward a brothel that provided slightly more privacy than having sex in the alley. He looked in the other direction, where three bull demons stomped out of a tavern, bellowing.

“Guess someone had a good night playing cards,” Lee said.

“Omelets all around,” Sebastian muttered, watching as three horned, shaggy heads turned in the direction of Philo’s place, where Lynnea waited tables and cooked a few “special” dishes.

“I hear Lynnea’s got the bull demons clearing out some of the brush around your place and cutting another path so folks aren’t walking through your back yard when they want to get from the Den to Aurora.”

“Yeah,” Sebastian said, stepping aside to let the bull demons stomp over to their favorite table and then wait politely for Lynnea to notice them. “She made a cake—with a buttercream frosting, mind you—and brought it to Philo’s during one of her work shifts. Gave each of the bull demons a piece of cake and offered to make each one a cake of his very own in exchange for clearing brush and cutting the new path. The negotiations got…noisy.”

Lee grinned. “I heard you almost had to lock up your own wife.”

“You hear too much. Anyway, they each get a cake for clearing the brush, and another cake for cutting the new path through the woods so we can maintain some privacy at home.”

“Did you get a taste of the sample cake when all this bartering was going on?”

Sebastian just sighed.

Lee laughed.

“So,” Sebastian said, watching Lynnea and the bull demons. “Tell me again about noticing someone in the Den who’s different?” When Lee didn’t answer, he turned and looked at his cousin. “Lee? Lee! ”

“I have to go. Someone needs…” So strong. The need was so strong. “I have to go.”

He started to step back, to step away. Before he’d completed that first step, Sebastian grabbed his jacket and hauled him back so close that the only things separating them were Sebastian’s fists.

“Where are you going?” Sebastian demanded.

“I don’t know. It’s not a place. I don’t get a sense of place.”

“You’re the only Bridge Nadia and Glorianna can count on. Maybe the only one living in their landscapes. If something happens to you…”

“I know.” Lee tried to free himself, but even if he decked Sebastian, Lynnea was heading toward them—and the bull demons were on their feet, waiting to see what the humans were going to do—and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teaser hustling toward them. He wasn’t going anywhere until Sebastian let him go. Unless he took Sebastian with him. All it would take was a stumble and a step back, but…

“I know,” he said again. “But I have to go. I’ll use my island to cross over to the place where I feel the need. I’ll be careful. As long as I stay on the island, I’m connected to Sanctuary. I can get back. I’m not going to take a risk that will put us in danger, Sebastian, but I can’t leave a heart out there when the need is so strong.”

Sebastian uncurled his fists but didn’t quite let go of Lee’s jacket. “You’re exhausted now, practically asleep on your feet. How long will this take?”

“You can’t pin a time on something like—”

The hands tightened into fists again. “How long?”

This isn’t about me being the only Bridge in Nadia’s and Glorianna’s landscapes. This is about family. “Give me four hours. If you don’t hear from me by then, figure I’ve run into bad trouble.” Not that knowing that would do you any good. If I’m in the kind of trouble that makes it impossible to reach my island, there’s nothing you can do to help me.

Sebastian let go of Lee’s jacket and stepped back. “Four hours.”

Using his unusual gift of being able to impose his small island over another landscape, Lee brought the island to the Den’s main street. He extended one hand back and felt the bark of a tree. One step back and he was standing on the island, vanished from the sight of the Den’s citizens even though he could still see them.

Slipping one hand into his jacket pocket, he fingered the coiled braid he carried everywhere. Resonance and need rang through him, confirming what he’d already suspected. He was about to let Ephemera’s currents of power take him to an unknown landscape in order to find the woman who belonged to a discarded braid of hair.

And he hoped she was worth the risks.

“Iz dead.”

“Iz sleeping.”

“Iz dead .”

“Iz sleeping .”

“How you know iz sleeping?”

“Cause I poked it? See?” poke poke poke.

Michael jerked awake, coughed up more bog water, then groaned. “I’m not sleeping now, you brainless twits, and I’m not dead, either.”

Silence. Then the first one said, “We could kill it. Iz enough flesh on it to feed the clan.”

Clan. Bog. Lady of Light, have mercy on me.

Michael pushed himself up to a sitting position and carefully rubbed his eyes, which felt hot and gritty. Then he looked at the two youngsters standing in front of him—and the adults silently moving closer.

The Merry Makers were human-shaped, and a full-grown one came up as high as a human man’s chest. But they looked like they were formed from the bogs they claimed as their own: thin brown bodies with limbs that looked like animated branches; hands that had long, twiggy fingers; faces that could have been carved from gnarls of wood; hair like the moss that hung from the trees that grew on the bog’s islands.

There was a vicious strength in those thin limbs that could easily overpower a grown man, and humans lured into the bog by the lights and the music seldom found their way home.

Unless they could bargain.

“I am not familiar with this clan,” Michael said, feeling the need to step as carefully with his words as he would with his feet in order to get out of this dark place. “But I have been among your people before.” Early in his wandering, when he’d been young and foolish and lost one night—and had learned firsthand that the stories about the demons who lived in their world weren’t just stories. “We shared a night of music.”

They didn’t speak. Their large yellow eyes just stared at him.

There was no place for him to go. The Merry Makers were in front of him. A quick roll would have him back in the water, but the water offered no real escape from them—and trying to escape would be enough to condemn him.

Then one clear note sounded through the air.

Michael looked toward the sound and noticed his pack sitting close by, open.

He didn’t remember taking off the pack, but his memories of what happened after he hit the water were jumbled bits of images. At least now he understood why he’d thought trees had reached down and saved him from drowning.

The Merry Maker who stepped forward held Michael’s tin whistle in its long fingers. “Magician.” The voice was deep and harsh and yet fluid—and sounded like it belonged to the bog itself. “We have heard of you, Magician.”

There was something more primal about this one, something more dangerous. Which made Michael wonder if he was looking at this clan’s Heart of the Bog. He’d heard the name the last time he’d been among the Merry Makers. They wouldn’t explain what it meant, but he figured the name itself pretty much said it all—especially in terms of who made the decision of whether or not a human lived or died.