“You know a Dark One?” I asked, surprised for some reason. “I didn’t realize that liches and vampires mixed.”
“So far as I know, they don’t, but this is a special case. My master knows that I was under Pia’s protection for a while, and he’s forbidden me to have any contact with them. But you could tell them where I am, and explain what happened to me.”
The lost look in his eyes tugged at my heart. I was silent for a minute, trying to sort through my thoughts. “I’ll do what I can,” I said at last.
“Goddess!” Eirik protested. “You are going to help the lich? You won’t let us gut him if you want to help him!”
“I wasn’t going to let you gut him in the first place. Honestly, Eirik, you’d think by now you would realize that I’m not going to just let you run around killing whoever you want to kill. From this moment on, you can assume that I’m not going to let you kill anyone. Got that?”
As the words left my lips, the door opened and a man walked in, but the acrid stench that clung to him told me that this was no mortal man. He was slight and dark, and the moment his eyes lit on me, they glittered with unholy light. “A Beloved? For me? How thoughtful of you! I haven’t had a Beloved sacrificed to me in . . . oh, forever. I will enjoy ripping out her soul.”
Eirik shot me a look.
“Fine,” I said, glaring at the demon. “You can gut him. But no one else.”
The Vikings were on the demon before it had time to do much damage to them. I moved back out of the way as they jumped the demon, blades slashing, black blood flying, and various oaths and demonic screeches piercing the still air of the room. The Vikings were whooping it up as well, and so far as I could tell, having the time of their lives pounding the demon to a pulp. After a good minute and a half of that, all that remained was a blob on the floor that disappeared in a blast of nasty, oily black smoke that stained the floor and covered the Vikings in a fine black ash.
“Don’t tell me—your master keeps demons, too?” I asked Ulfur.
He shook his head, looking with curiosity at the spot on the sage carpet. “No. That was Verin, a demon in Asmodeus’s legions. He was acting as courier between his demon lord and my master.”
I pursed my lips. “Whops. The demon was just sent back to Asmodeus, right? Because you can’t destroy a demon, just his form?”
“Correct.” Ulfur looked a bit worried, which in turn made me think we’d overstayed our welcome and wonder if his master would seek retribution.
“That’s all I need—someone else after my blood,” I said on a sigh. “This necromancer master of yours . . . is he likely to be peeved to find out the courier was temporarily destroyed?”
“De Marco isn’t a necromancer,” Ulfur said, prodding at the black stain with the tip of his shoe. “He’s an Ilargi.”
“Ah.” I tried to remember what it was that Imogen had told me about them. “Those are the guys who steal souls. So, what—” I paused, something Ulfur said chiming a warning bell in my head. “What did you say your master’s name is?”
“De Marco. Alphonse de Marco.”
My jaw dropped a tiny bit. I actually stood there blinking with my mouth hanging open in surprise. “Are you sure?” I asked, immediately realizing how idiotic that sounded.
“Quite sure.”
I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion that clogged up my brain like so much sticky spiderweb. “It can’t be the same person. It just can’t be. It’s coincidence, nothing more. You don’t happen to know his birth date, do you? Or whether he was ever married, or had a daughter named Petra?”
Ulfur looked as confused as I felt. “I don’t know his birth date or whether he was married, although I don’t believe he was. He did have a daughter, but she was stolen from him when she was a baby.”
“Stolen by who?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Gypsies.”
“Oh, come on, that’s a cliché! Real Gypsies don’t do things like that,” I protested.
He shrugged. “That’s what de Marco told me. He has long sought to find his daughter, but says she’s been hidden well. He did say something odd about her, though. . . .”
“I don’t know what could be much odder than being stolen by Gypsies,” I said, feeling more and more like Alice in a really deranged version of Wonderland.
“He said that so long as he had her horn, the baby couldn’t be used against him.”
I just looked at him for a few seconds. His mild gray eyes held my gaze. “You know, I think it’s going to be better for my sanity if I just move along, both figuratively and literally. If your master wants to have a hissy on my butt about destroying the demon’s form, he can. Otherwise, it’s time to leave. Where can I find your friend Pia and her vampire?”