“Oh, you have been gone awhile,” Loa said. “They blew down Val Hall, lair of the Valkyries.”
“With explosives?”
“With a single breath. Darach Lyka—the primordial Lykae—razed it to the ground.”
“Fuck me.” Another worry. Put it on the list.
Loa muttered, “That ship has officially sailed.”
After flirting for years, he and Loa had kissed before he’d left for Quondam, but neither had experienced the life-changing heights they’d both expected. Once it was over, she’d patted him on the shoulder and said, “We’ll never be revisitin’ this again,” and he’d given her a definitive nod.
Kereny’s watchful gaze was unreadable as she said, “Lyka’s the one originally bitten by a wolf in the Book of Lore, right? Is he your great-great—great times twenty—grandfather?”
“Nay, he bit and turned others, who then begat our bloodlines. But each Lykae beast can be traced to his bite.”
Kereny nodded, taking everything in, then said, “You might as well go ahead and explain what the Møriør is.”
“Aye, then. They’re a group of primordials—the oldest and strongest of each immortal species. Their members range from the King of Hell to a giant. True monsters. They mean to rule all Loreans beneath a single bootheel.” He couldn’t even contemplate that threat now. “But one enemy at a time. Now we contend with the warlocks.” He asked the priestess, “Can you arrange for the House of Witches to place a boundary spell like yours over Glenrial? Jels might know of my wards.”
“On it.” Loa’s fingers flew over her phone screen once more. Moments later came an incoming-text beep. She scanned the response. “Done. With my surcharge, naturally.”
Kereny couldn’t control her curiosity. “Did you somehow send a telegram to the witches?”
“Well, in a way, yes. A telephone telegram, of sorts.” She told Munro, “I assume your own phone is in a pile somewhere in Quondam’s dungeon.”
Or an acid pit. “Something like that. And I’ve got to check on my wards.” Also, King Lachlain would need a status report.
Loa crossed to an aisle with a sign that read: Wicca Tech! She collected a phone and tossed it to him. “Just released by the House of Witches.”
“Wicca tech?” The packaging claimed that the phone was shatterproof, fireproof, and waterproof “all the way to Nereus’s lair.” The battery was promised to last a decade, and reception was “guaranteed anywhere in all the worlds!”
How much Munro detested magic; how much he was beginning to rely on it.
He tore open the package, thinking, If Tàmhas could see me now. Munro had forbidden the mortal boy to get a simple protection spell, calling his request blasphemy.
Yet Munro now stood in a Loremart full of hexed goods, his body healed from some kind of witchly brew, and he’d hoped for exactly such a spell for his mortal mate. What a godsdamned hypocrite.
When he clasped the phone, pain pricked his hand. He flipped the case over, saw that the phone had sucked a drop of his blood into a tiny reservoir. “What the hell, priestess?”
“Ah, that. Your lifeblood powers a spell that will siphon the information from your previous phone. That’s a beta feature, so your patience is requested.”
He glanced at the screen, saw his information slowly populating. He gazed over at Kereny. “I’ve got to make a few calls. Why don’t you look around for some gear? But stay away from the windows. And try no’ to antagonize the snake. And touch nothing that looks like it was made for immortals.”
She quirked a brow. “Wolf, I did manage to keep myself alive all this time.”
“Nay, lass, you dinna. Twice you dinna make it to thirty.”
Kereny narrowed her eyes. “That remains to be seen.”
“Come, mortal,” Loa told her, breaking up the tension, “let’s shop!”
Once they’d headed across the store, Munro rang his wards but got neither Rónan nor Benneit. He called King Lachlain; no answer. Where was everyone?
Munro dialed Madadh’s line, intending only to leave a message, yet Madadh quickly answered.
“Was hoping you got out,” the male said in Gaelic. As Glenrial’s master of the watch, he would be instrumental in its protection.
Munro replied in the same language, “I dinna expect you to have a phone so soon.”
He admitted, “Some bloody Wicca tech or something.”
“I as well. Have you seen Rónan or Ben?”
“I dispatched a sentry to retrieve them. They’re out camping. With witches.”
Another worry for another day. Add it to the list. “How much do you remember?”
“Every bloody second.”
Munro remembered too. Please, mister, no! Since none of his victims had resurrected, that young father had died beneath Munro’s fangs. Shaking off those memories, he said, “On my way out of Quondam, I might’ve destroyed the warlocks’ temple and their time-travel gateway and gotten Ormlo killed. Jels was winged as well.” Shame that arm would grow back.
“The tits.” Madadh was a wolf of few words. “What of your married mate?”
“She dinna resurrect.” Munro’s gaze fell on her across the shop. “So I went to the past to collect her again. She’s still mortal.”